Let's Stop Pretending Peaceful Demonstrations Will Fix The System. 'Peace Officers' Don't Give A Shit About Peace.
from the [types-self-out-of-any-government-employment-ever] dept
First off, I would like to thank Mike Masnick and Techdirt for publishing my post on the George Floyd killing and the (in my eyes) justifiable destruction of police property as an answer to years of injustice and "bad apple" excuses. Very few sites would have published such a post. Most would have rejected it after reading the title.
I also appreciate the commenters who weighed in, including those who disagreed with me. It was a strong stance for me to take and I expected to be drowned in criticism. That I wasn't buried by critics perhaps demonstrates my points were well-made. Or it may just indicate the general public is sick and tired of cop bullshit -- bullshit they far too often walk away from, thanks to generous union contracts, the almost-obligatory judicial application of qualified immunity, or the continued sheltering of police officers from personal responsibility by legislators.
But I did want to respond to one comment in the thread in particular. This comment suggested I was off-base and that peaceful protests are productive and have resulted in systemic changes. Despite the evidence I had laid down that being peaceful and seeking change through acceptable routes has been a net loss over the last 50+ years, a commenter suggested otherwise.
This is the central argument of the comment submitted by one of our many anonymous commenters. (Just a reminder, we love anonymous commenters and would never demand you give us all your vitals in exchange for your ability to comment on articles. We also allow you to turn ads off if you wish with no financial obligation. That being said, there are multiple ways to support this fiercely independent site, so click thru if you'd like to help. Thanks!)
In contrast to a number of the opinions I have been reading here and on other sites, I am not okay with burning everything down and I do not think that rioting and looting is going to result in any lasting change for the better. Taxpayer dollars were used to build that police station and purchase the police vehicles that got destroyed. A person's life savings might be invested in that house or business that was set on fire. A corporate building (such as Target) might not be replaced in the future. (Black neighborhoods have been complaining of corporate chains avoiding them due to the higher costs incurred.) Yes, insurance might pay to replace the lost things. Yes, corporations and people might rebuild. However, what of the turmoil and hardship that occurs in ALL of the surrounding lives that have to find ways to cope without the services or shelter they previously had?
Rioting seems to only divide us into those who follow the rules of civil society and those who do not. I have read multiple accounts of people who came to peacefully protest, but LEFT when they realized things were going turn violent. They came to PROTEST violence, not PARTICIPATE in it. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi showed us that big changes CAN be be achieved without using violence. The PBS series "Eyes on the Prize" shows how the system in place tried multiple tactics and violence to derail the civil rights movement. Video clips of police violence were aired on TV. But the protesters did not fight back. They did not join in the violence. As those who wanted to maintain the status quo were forced to use stronger tactics against the protesters, the more it became obvious to the other members of society that something was seriously wrong and needed to be changed. The injustice was clear. Those who wanted justice then JOINED the protesters until those in power couldn't ignore the injustice any further. Remember, our political representatives ONLY rule with the consent of the governed. When the governed rise up in unified agreement, change DOES happen.
I appreciate the point being made. Nonviolent protest can result in positive changes. Unfortunately, given the history of this nation and its law enforcement agencies, one cannot apply it to the current situation. The argument is coherent. But the effectiveness of holding back and operating within the confines of numerous social contracts has yet to prove a net gain for minorities -- especially black Americans, who spent years as slaves and years as subhumans following the abolition of slavery.
Here's Trevor Noah explaining eloquently why this flashpoint isn't an overreaction to a single data point, but rather the culmination of hundreds of years of history.
That's why this commenter's argument doesn't work. And here's why the current situation -- as horrendous and shocking as it seems -- is more likely to move the dial on moving cops back into their rightful position as protectors and servants, rather than self-appointed warlords overseeing a mostly imaginary domestic conflict.
Several commenters said I was advocating for violence and destruction. They're only half-right.
I don't want looting and senseless violence either. In fact, I want no violence. I do not want police officers killed or injured. But if anyone should be targeted for destruction, it should be the entities that have perpetrated this violence upon certain Americans for years. Let them experience what it is to live as a black person in America -- one now "led" by someone who openly calls for violence against those exercising their First Amendment rights (protesters, journalists).
I have already pointed out how peaceful protests have failed to effect change. These acts -- the burning of precincts and police vehicles -- may not either, but it will make the point far more effectively than hanging back and being compliant. I don't want to see business owners victimized by opportunists but I think a few burning cop cars is a small price to pay for equality and serious police reform.
The law enforcement agencies of America have earned every bit of the hatred they're now feeling. But during these protests all things are equal. There are no courts, no unions, no "tough-on-crime" legislators standing between cops and the destruction of their property. Sucks for them. And when the shit goes down, they flee their posts and give up any appearance of giving a damn about serving or protecting.
No one forced cops to behave this way. They took it upon themselves to act as warriors while performing a job that asks them to act as society's protector. They talk a lot about the "thin blue line" between us and chaos, and then act as agents of chaos as soon as an opportunity presents itself. De-escalation tactics are an anomaly. Talking about the great sex you'll have after offing a citizen is the norm.
The police in America have long taken advantage of programs that give them military vehicles, clothing, and weapons at nearly no cost. That they now perceive themselves as soldiers rather than peace officers is demonstrated daily -- beginning with the flash bangs announcing their presence during no-knock raids targeting non-violent crime and continuing through their mostly-unchallenged ability to strip US citizens of their cash, cars, and other property at whim.
There is no compelling reason for cops to change their standard M.O. And, granted, lighting the occasional cop car on fire will likely only solidify their misguided "warrior" mentality. But it does make it clear that the people still have power, even if the greater power -- the US government that has treated minorities as lower classes for years -- will ultimately prevail.
Then there's the entire subclass of US citizens who spend their days bumper-stickering and forum-posting about how they and their guns will rise up against the government should it prove to be dangerous to American citizens and their rights. WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY? Outside of a few Boogaloo contingents, the "Obama is coming for muh guns" crowd has remained silent and useless, presumably digging into their eight-year supply of dehydrated food until the government makes it safe for white people to walk around again. Fuck those guys. They suck as much as the government entities they claim to view as enemies. When the shit goes down, these motherfuckers start bunkering. Cowards.
The current situation is far from ideal. No one wants to live in a civil unrest hotspot, given the unpredictability of the situation. Governments all over the nation, however, are willing to make things worse -- calling in an offshoot of the military best known for killing Vietnam War protesters. The war is at home, but the instigators are the people we've entrusted to protect society. They have continually proven they're not up to the job. And they've made things worse by pretending every movement is furtive, every black man is probably armed, and every bit of cash in a someone's wallet is probably drug money. They are road pirates, murderers, gang members, and charlatans. Let them feel the flames.
They have created their own personal hell. There should be no more free passes. This is the America they created. Whatever burns, burns. This is on their heads. No matter what any politician says in hopes of mollifying the voting public, the truth remains undeniable: you reap what you sow.
REAP MOTHERFUCKERS. REAP.
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Filed Under: black lives matter, george floyd, police, police brutality, protests, racism
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Never more applicable than now...
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."[John F. Kennedy March 1962]
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."[George Santayana, 1905]
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Then say so, directly. I sit on the sidelines cheering on the destruction of police vehicles and property yet at the same time hoping that looters, those attacking people totally unresponsible for the injustices and stealing their life's work, get what's coming to them. You casually dismiss that injustice as a side-effect of rebelling against the police state.
You expect individual gun owners to go out and point guns at cops in large groups wearing riot gear? Are you daft? Guns are not the answer to governmental injustice. They are the answer to violent governmental oppression on a large scale, such as a declaration of martial law.
Cops have now killed protesters, violated freedom of the press and numerous other offenses (in addition to their generations-long history of offenses). The spark is there for an uprising but it has not quite yet ignited the flames of armed rebellion. Just wait; It could. We stand on the precipice of revolution and if the Cheeto doesn't play his cards right he could find himself responsible for the overthrow of the government. All those "cowards" you tried to call out are waiting.
I completely agree, so long as we're talking about the government and its agents, not citizens just trying to get by in a world owned by the 1%.
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You expect individual gun owners to go out and point guns at cops in large groups wearing riot gear?
Absolutely not! People like that only carry their guns where it matters: at the local Walmart when they go to buy milk.
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Where is the NRA? Surely martial law is what they hate.
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What do you expect a gun rights advocacy group to do about corrupt law enforcement?
Where are you? You could grab a stick or knife and go solve whatever problem you think someone else should be solving, right?
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"Where is the NRA? Surely martial law is what they hate."
The NRA, primarily consisting of, hrm, "white, law-abiding citizens, true pillars of the community", can walk around toting rifles as much as they like. The cops won't care.
A black man does the same pot odds are he gets shot for not dropping to the ground fast enough.
So why would the NRA give much of a shit? Half of them are too busy organizing the next cross-burning to care -beyond hoisting a few lagers for the brave boys in blue keeping white america white.
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You don't think that's what's been happening? Why, because you're white and so it's not happening to you personally?
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Yes. Be consistent.
No. Not daft, just a stickler.
Martial law is just around the corner. Better get some practice in.
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I think you are way off base about a few things.
It was one officer that did the bad thing and 2 or 3 who may or may not have realized the intensity of what was going on. So, to blame all law enforcement is just childish and wrong. Yes, every organization has its bad apples, but when you look at the raw numbers, you have to realize that most law enforcement is good. Consider that if George Floyd hadn't committed a crime in the first place none of this would have happened. He is not an innocent victim.
Those you call cowards for not rising up in protest and instead hunkering down, first of all few of them are hunkering down. Secondly, it's not their problem. It's the problem of blacks.
Finally, violence only begets violence. Unless you want to live in a society where violence is the norm, there is absolutely no justification for breaking laws - any laws. There is certainly no justification for the looting, rioting, blocking streets and killing people that go on. Nothing you say will ever convince any sane person that violence is okay. (Unfortunately there are too many people with serious mental health or psychological issues who will think violence is acceptable in this situation). Look at the Miami riots of 1980. Absolutely nothing good came out of it for the black community of Liberty City. Same with the St. Louis protests a few years back. Has anything really changed as a result of violence? No. And my last comment is that racism isn't nearly as bad as everyone thinks it is.
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It was one officer that did the bad thing and 2 or 3 who may or may not have realized the intensity of what was going on. So, to blame all law enforcement is just childish and wrong. Yes, every organization has its bad apples, but when you look at the raw numbers, you have to realize that most law enforcement is good.
I think anyone looking at the evidence (reinforced by police activities over the last few days, but going back way beyond that) has seen that it is not "one officer."
As for the "bad apples" line, remember what that saying says: a few bad apples spoil the bunch. The entire bunch is spoiled.
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Chris Rock: "Here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. I know being a cop is hard. I know that shit’s dangerous. I know it is, okay? But some jobs can’t have bad apples."
"Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like … pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can’t be like, 'Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.'"
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If you are one of those apples, and look the other way when the bad ones do the bad stuff, then you are just as bad as them....
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I agree with your assertion that "..a few bad apples spoil the bunch.."
But, if you remove a bad apple from a bunch as soon as you recognize it as a bad apple, there is still a very good chance of being able to save the rest of the crop.
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Therein lies the problem: When it comes to cops, bad apples don’t get removed that quickly.
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There is a powerful police union in most major cities. I say eliminate all unions that represent government workers, on the basis that there is effectively noone against which they negotiate. In the case of policing, it seems like noone has taken the side of the people.
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"I say eliminate all unions that represent government workers, on the basis that there is effectively noone against which they negotiate."
Not quite correct. I can envision government workers needing representation when it comes to salaries and job conditions.
The problem crops up when the union primarily becomes a lobby group meant to keep their members out of hot legal water.
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Therein lies the problem: When it comes to cops, bad apples don’t get removed that quickly.
Assuming they ever get removed, which is a big part of the problem. When you're the kinda person who likes showing your 'lessers' the proper way to kiss asphalt and know that there will be zero penalties for your actions why not do whatever the hell you want?
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Especially when, even if you're tossed out of the barrel, the worst that seems to happen is you end up in the next barrel over.
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Yes. But a few.bad apples spoil the barrel.
Police like to claim they need to make examples. That being afraid allows force. We should take at word. After all, what comes around goes around. They should come.down like the hammer they want on drug users on misbehaving cops.
Also, we should remember why the declaration of independece happened. Those who forget history..
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The thing to keep in mind is that even if those officers didn't realize someone was being killed right next to them, that lack of awareness is legally irrelevant.
All that matters to make you an accomplice is being with the person who committed the crime. They knew or reasonably should have known the force was excessive, therefore the death that resulted is on them. That's how broad the laws defining who is an accomplice are.
Non-police have been convicted of murder for doing far less than those cops other than the one kneeling on the guy's neck did - and their convictions are considered appropriate and just by the courts.
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Thank you for your tireless effort to make Techdirt go the way of Vice or Ars Technica as a activist tool and forum of opinion pieces, rather than journalism, with your valued contributions.
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You new around here?
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[Asserts facts not in evidence]
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Just a numbers for you, there are 800,000 law enforcement officers in the US. Using the line "a few bad apples spoils the bunch" is extreme bull shit, the sort of thing you never would have done a few years ago. Maybe you should get out of the social chimney you have been living in for a while.
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"...there are 800,000 law enforcement officers in the US. Using the line "a few bad apples spoils the bunch" is extreme bull shit..."
Imagine, for one second, that out of those 800,000 law enforcement officers, a few dozen regularly kill people just to get their kicks and many times that number bully ethnic minorities or the perceived vulnerable. I mean, just as the official statistics say, right?
Now imagine further that the 800,000 law enforcement officers solidly close ranks to have the backs of the dozens and hundreds of serial killers and thugs among them. ALSO exactly as history shows it to be.
The only bullshit around here is that when an officer of the law brutally murders, slowly and deliberately, a handcuffed man, who is begging for his life in a fading voice, without even bothering to take his hands out of his pocket or lose the bored expression on his face...the result is dismissal and a third degree murder charge.
Had a black man done the same he would have been instantly arrested, charged with a few dozen offenses ranging from first degree murder and counting down, as would anyone and everyone surrounding him at the time, as accessories.
The fact that a limp-wristed DA found that he HAD to charge a police officer with something and finally squeezed out the absolute minimum any law should allow is quite telling that the entire judiciary is infected with whatever rot officer Chauvin had.
If there are 800,000 police officers around the US then every last one of them failed their obligation because unlike a normal civilian it's their god damned job to do their damndest to prevent this sort of shit from happening.
And yet...after a few dozen race riots all starting with some black man murdered by police officers it's always the same story. The Officer doing the murder turns out to have a list of complaints many pages long, often including several wrongful deaths, and has been extensively exonerated by all his peers and colleagues for every one of them.
It's no longer possible for ANY US law enforcement officer to say "I didn't do it". It's time for them to stand up and say "I don't care if you wear the same uniform, this shit stops now, partner".
And if they can't do that then they need to hand in their badge because their job description doesn't say "Enforce the law except when another police officer is violating it".
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Imagine, for one second, I shit gold bricks out my ass. (see second para)
Now Imagine for one second, I shit silver out my ass. (see third para)
The only bullshit I see here is the crap you are spouting ... (see forth para)
Now for some more facts ... More whites are killed by police than blacks.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/
So get off your soap box and do some fucking research. Dumb ass.
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"Now for some more facts ... More whites are killed by police than blacks."
You mean the statistics which clearly show that proportionally twice as many blacks are killed as white people...and that 1 in 1000 black people can expect to be killed by police?
"So get off your soap box and do some fucking research. Dumb ass."
It's always nice to see one of the Very Fine People demonstrating they can't do basic math to save their lives.
And your "arguments" prior to your claim that you don't know how to read and do numbers is just an assertion that reality is lying to us. Nicely done, troll.
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but when you look at the raw numbers, you have to realize that most law enforcement is good.
And to be fair, those are numbers they get when they investigate themselves.
People sure seem to have a problem when Facebook investigates itself over conservative bias and finds nothing wrong. But when it comes to the police we're supposed to just accept the raw numbers?
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"And to be fair, those are numbers they get when they investigate themselves."
I have no doubt those numbers are good.
The problem is that those numbers usually don't count the amount of times the entire precinct looks the other way and pretends not to see when one of their number decides to curbstomp some kid just because he happens to not like black people very much.
Look at just about every police officer who finally got caught on camera doing the completely unacceptable and illegal. The guy has usually done the same dozens of times before, in the company of multiple other officers. He's known to be a thug in his precinct. He may have been "encouraged" to move to other precincts where he'll be better received, until he finds himself somewhere where he has good company.
The thing is, though, that if the first time he got brutal on someone, his own colleagues had been the ones to act, dozens of people wouldn't have had to suffer. The police way of dealing with a murdering thug wearing the same uniform is to shuffle the problem off to someone else. NEVER to actually deal with it.
That's why there are riots now. Not just because yet another black man was murdered by a cop, but because the whole US police force is constitutionally unable to do their god damn jobs as soon as it's one of their own on the line. The system as a whole has failed.
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"It was one officer that did the bad thing and 2 or 3 who may or may not have realized the intensity of what was going on. So, to blame all law enforcement is just childish and wrong. Yes, every organization has its bad apples, but when you look at the raw numbers, you have to realize that most law enforcement is good."
This is a lie.
"Consider that if George Floyd hadn't committed a crime in the first place none of this would have happened. He is not an innocent victim."
This is pathetic.
"Secondly, it's not their problem. It's the problem of blacks."
"And my last comment is that racism isn't nearly as bad as everyone thinks it is."
Just wow.
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Consider that if George Floyd hadn't committed a crime in the first place none of this would have happened. He is not an innocent victim.
I had missed this on first read, but what the actual fuck? Since when has the sentence for passing a phony bill been instant death? You are not a serious person.
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I hate to being this up...
But supreme court iirc has ruled police just have to believe a.crome was.cpmmited to arrest. They do not have to prove it. And resisting arrest is still arrest.
And people who lost money in civil asset forfeiture were.not charged either. So your blame is an issue.
By own logic, police caused this by overreacting to a simple crime.
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Reasonable force is also what's required, kneeling on someones neck is actually banned in most of the US and in Canada.
It just happens to not be banned in Minneapolis and guess what happened.
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As if cops follow the rules.
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"Since when has the sentence for passing a phony bill been instant death?"
Since about the time Lincoln released the Emancipation Proclamation, and black people were converted from valuable property into scary, free people presumed to have an eternal, mortal grudge against white people. In psychology, we call that "projection" - quit projecting, white people...not everybody's as hatefully vengeful as you.
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Wow, so many things wrong in this ridiculous post.
George Floyd wasn’t an innocent victim? So the allegation of passing a bad check deserves being summarily executed? I hope you’ve done nothing wrong in your life that might result in the same fate. Oh wait, that won’t happen to you because I’m assuming you aren’t black.
And yes, I will blame all of law enforcement for the actions of 1 or 2 bad apples, because none of the so-called good apples have done anything to keep the bad ones in check. Only when there’s overwhelming video evidence out there do the higher-ups in law enforcement seem to do anything about it and even then the punishment is relatively minor. When the police departments out there become serious about cleaning house, then I will stop blaming them for the bad apples’ behavior.
And yes, there’s no excuse for the looting, law-breaking and killings. So when are the police going to stop doing those things? Wait, you were talking about the protesters? Yeah, I think you just proved the protestors’ point.
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Do you wear KKK underwear when typing this?
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"Do you wear KKK underwear when typing this?"
Sadly it isn't even unlikely that the poster considers himself a liberal pro-equality citizen believing in law and order who is just up to his ears in denial right now.
I often find, as a white european, that white americans often have a view on racism in america which borders on religious fanaticism. None are so blind as those that do not, under any circumstances, wish to see.
It's why Malcolm X said something about how he was more afraid of the well-intentioned but ignorant liberal than the openly hostile Klan member. And why MLK mentioned that all that was required for evil to triumph was that good people do nothing.
If you're white in the US you have other concerns. You'll never have experienced being a second-class citizen and you probably haven't watched your black friends, with the same wealth and spotless record you do, get treated, by authorities, banks and brokers, as if they were fugitives still wearing prison uniforms.
You have to worry about your job, your kids, your mortgage, and on whether little timmy will be able to get to his summer camp in time. You won't be sitting up in terror over a late night call because it might bear the news that little timmy just got shot by a cop who somehow mistook his smartphone for a handgun.
What really gets to me, the same way it got to me over Ferguson and Charlottesville, is how all these well-intentioned american caucasian always come staggering out of their comfort zones going "I had NO idea it was this bad!!".
Or end up squawking in distress that black people are out burning shit again. Only in america. At a certain point, willful ignorance ought to be a criminal offense, I sometimes think...
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If a White person had used a counterfeit $20 bill (possibly without knowing it was a fake), I doubt the police would’ve ended up killing that person. The systems of racism within American society teach White people to think of Black people as inherently criminal and violent — and no such system better exemplifies the end result of that thinking than policing.
Dylann Roof shot and killed nine Black people in a church, and the cops took him in without firing a shot, then took him to a goddamn Burger King or whatever to get some food. George Floyd used a counterfeit bill (possibly without knowing it was a fake), and the cops killed him. If you think the comparison is even remotely fair, the problem isn’t that George Floyd committed a crime — it’s on how you think Black people should be treated by the cops, period.
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I didn't realize the sentence for possessing or passing a counterfeit bill was death without a trial.
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But unfortunately, the sentence for possessing or passing a counterfeit bill whilst black does appear to be death without a trial.
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A shop keeper claiming that he passed a forged note is not proof of a crime, and far from proof that he intended to pass forged notes. Besides which, anybody can pass a forged not without realising it, if they have been given one in the course of their normal activities.
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Holy... wow.
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Isn't it nice to know that the price of a human life in some people's eyes is only $20? And by nice I mean utterly horrific. They took a human life for a sum of money that wouldn't even buy him a decent pair of shoes, think about that for a moment before trying to blame the victim.
The 'Oh he was a criminal' cries from the right remind me of when the police in Dallas leaked the fact Botham Jean had a few grams of cannabis in his home for personal use to try and smear him in a monstrous attempt justify an offduty officer walking into his home and murdering him.
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Re: [just way too much fail]
In this case it was just one officer that did the bad (illegal,immoral, evil) thing. His buddies just stood around and watched. A man accused of committing a crime. He never did get his day in court did he? Perhaps in your mind non-white == guilty when accused.
You would have to be willfully blind not to see just how out of control our law enforcement personnel have become. Every day there are reports of cops killing bystanders, stealing property, or just making things up. On a good day, all three (hello there Gerald Goines down in Houston). Don't even get me started on how many family dogs are shot and killed, just because they can.
Unfortunately the system is working as designed. It's designed to enforce high justice for the wealthy and well connected, and low justice for everyone else. Cops benefit the most from the current situation. We have legislators writing laws that protect them, and we have courts that go out of their way to excuse their actions. That is of course assuming that it ever gets that far. Most police departments clear their own, and the worse most bad apples can expect to endure is a paid vacation.
So when there's a no-knock raid, complete with flash bangs and riot gear to deliver unpaid utility bills, when cops completely demolish someone's home (after they've been given the keys to the front door), when cops think that the most effective means to help a mentally unstable person perched on a ledge threatening suicide is to taser them, your excuse that is's just a few bad apples rings hollow.
Yes, riots are counterproductive (in my opinion anyway). Mainly because they are often aimed at the wrong targets and co-opted by those who just revel in the chaos (like our current President unfortunately). I believe if you are going to riot, it needs to be against your oppressors; cops, and their buildings, vehicles, and enablers. Smashing bodegas, and burning Target in the end doesn't really accomplish much, except show the world that you are really really angry and don't have an appropriate outlet for your anger.
If the men in blue were the protectors you try to make them out to be, they would be protecting the little mom and pop stores (and the Targets). Instead they are indiscriminately shooting peaceful protesters and rioters alike. Arresting and attacking journalists (who have clearly identified themselves as such) for the sin of doing their jobs and reporting on what's going on.
Racism is a matter of perspective and location. It is much much worse in some parts of the country than in others. It's also dependent on whether or not you or someone you know/love are non-white. Finally, it's a matter of class, how rich or poor you are. If you are Kanye West, your experience with racism is probably going to differ from a black homeless man in skid row. But to say that is isn't nearly as bad as everyone thinks it is, well that's just way too much fail.
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Re:
LIES, DAMN LIES, and STATISTICS...
George Floyd hadn't committed a crime, he was SUSPECTED of possibly passing a fake $20.00 bill, and for that you claim the sentence should be DEATH? Go back and suck up more to the police union why don't you, I'm sure they are looking for syncophants to support their lies.
"just one cop", well since STATISTICS can't exist where they aren't recorded (police shootings and killings) we can't really prove or disprove the 'just one cop' angle, but just look at the responses to the protests by police and it's easy to find, "just one bad cop" in every bunch, and if there's one bad apple, the entire barrel is spoiled...
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Re:
If it's just one officer, that "one officer" has been to a lot of places in the last four days.
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Re:
Yes. The charges against this officer are being ramped up and new charges brought against his peers who were on site. If you think quiet protests around the country would have made that happen you're only kidding yourself.
There is so much wrong with this statement it's not even worth replying further.
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Re: Re:
And my last comment is that racism isn't nearly as bad [for me] as everyone thinks it is.
FTFY - you douche-canoe
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Re:
To suggest that the police were acting within the right because the individual they summarily executed was accused of a violation-level offense is laughably absurd. By that logic, the police should have the power to kill anyone, anywhere, at any time. If all it takes to strip away the most fundamental rights is a mere accusation of a trivial offense, then you have no rights. Have you received a traffic ticket? Have you ever even been ACCUSED of breaking the speed limit? By your reasoning, you shouldn´t complain if the police kill you tomorrow.
If you want to surrender your own rights so stupidly, go for it, but you are not going to abolish the rights of everyone without a hell of a fight.
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Re:
"It was one officer that did the bad thing and 2 or 3 who may or may not have realized the intensity of what was going on. So, to blame all law enforcement is just childish and wrong."
The same way it was just ONE SS officer or ISIS member caught on camera kicking a minority or infidel into the ground?
If George Floyd's murder wasn't only the latest in a VERY long list of similar cases you might have a point. But he's not. Law enforcement officers have systematically murdered people for no other reason than Being Brown - in public, or in their own homes at the most flimsy of excuses for a long time.
How many dozens of unjustified murders do you want before you acknowledge that the problem is endemic and ubiquitous? You want an entire precinct exposed as cheering the death of a few "ni__ers"? Hell, we've got that. You want a squad of officers marching with the KKK? We've got that too.
"Consider that if George Floyd hadn't committed a crime in the first place none of this would have happened. He is not an innocent victim."
Except, you know, he hadn't. It was alleged that he'd used a counterfeit 20 dollar bill. This was the point where you slid right down to the "I'm not a racist but.." apologism where you grasp every straw to defend the brutal, slow, execution-style MURDER of a person who had not formally been arrested, had not been rated as a suspect, had not been read his rights.
He was just forced to the ground and slowly choked to death with a knee on his throat for being black.
"Finally, violence only begets violence. Unless you want to live in a society where violence is the norm, there is absolutely no justification for breaking laws - any laws."
The US police are indeed reaping what they have sown for persistently assaulting and murdering innocent people for no other reason than not being white. I note that you don't give a rat's ass about a few thousand officers of the law acting like a lynch mob. Hey, no one did, no matter how long the black people of the US kept asking, begging and finally demanding their equal rights as citizens. Now, once again, they're in the streets, no longer asking politely.
"And my last comment is that racism isn't nearly as bad as everyone thinks it is."
You've never asked an american black man, have you? What it's like to be considered a suspect based on the color of your skin?
Your current president is on record for, in his career, stating multiple times that he'd never hire black people, or let them rent his apartments.
You're either blind or simply fscking lying.
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Re: Re:
Oh, right, did we mention that at the time he was murdered he was already handcuffed, and on the ground, with other officers assisting chauvin in holding him down?
So not a criminal.
Not a threat.
Bound. Held down.
And then murdered.
Did you even have the balls to watch the movie of how this shit went down? Or did you just hear the wishful squawking from the Stormfront echo chamber about the dangerous Bad Black Man getting what was coming to him?
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Re:
love too hear from citizens who think any crime is punishable by death
looking at the raw numbers doesn't flatter the cops as much as you think it does. Sure there are good cops. But there a lot of marginal cops protecting worse cops. And on top of everything there are police unions and qualified immunity protecting the worst of the worst while people like you quote only half of the "bad apples" adage in an attempt to justify the inaction of thousands of cops.
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Jesus has already solved this problem:
"I hold told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world"
-John 16:33
Venting anger by burning police property can be cathartic, but is this something you would proudly tell your grandchildren? A better question is: What would Jesus do? What would be the way to effect change by showing love to our neighbor?
For a start, I think a better approach would be a unified, peaceful crowd that stands between a police officer and any of their attempts to harm a citizen. Each member of that crowd has their phone recording the scene, and some lawyers at the ready to sue the officer for any misconduct. This is an election year, and there is a opportunity to replace some politicians who want to maintain the status quo.
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Re:
But even Jesus entered the temple and began flipping the tables of the amoral money changers... So while I agree with your point, Jesus also points the way. When you see something so grotesque and amoral -- do something. Act.
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Re: Re:
He flipped tables, yes. But no people or animal or property were harmed. At worst those evil moneychangers got a stern scolding. Nothing burned.
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Re: Re: Re:
Fine, if we want to play 'whataboutisms' of the bible, let's talk escalating conflict before you get a radical change...
God turned water into blood -- pharaoh didn't care
God sent plague -- pharaoh didn't care
God sent pestilence -- pharaoh didn't care
God finally said 'screw it...' first born children are killed -- pharaoh finally cared released the enslaved Jewish people.
Let's just hope that this particular time in our history doesn't escalate that far before we learn our lesson.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
I hate to be pedantic, but you are quoting from the wrong testament. The original poster was quoting from the new testament, and your rebuttal is from the old testament. If you have read the Bible you would perhaps have noticed that the god of the old testament bares little resemblance to that of the new.
Contrary to what many may think, Jesus did away with many of the strictures of the old testament. It's why, unlike Jewish men, Christians are not required to be circumcised. Nor do Christians feel the need to sacrifice small animals to atone for their sins, since the death and resurrection of Christ put an end to that. At least as far as Christians are concerned.
If you want to try and use Christian teachings to rebut a Christian example, you'll have better luck with the portion of the bible that reflects the teachings of Jesus as opposed to their shared history with the Jews.
Just a thought...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
I think he quoted the right testament. If you're looking at outcomes, have yourself a look at how each iteration of god fared when he tried to make a point.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
You mean some parts of the bible should be ignored while others are to be followed?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
Well duh. That's basically religion in a nutshell and why there are so many flavors of it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
in a word yes.
The problem with the original poster is that he's confusing two different religions just because they happen to be in the same book.
aerinai started with a reference to Jesus from Christianity, when wevrem pointed out that he/she believed that Jesus would never condone harming people (or animals), aerinai tried to rebut it with a reference to Judaism.
My points are:
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
"to Christians the old testament rules no longer apply"
Depending on which Christians you ask. The Westboro Baptist church begs to differ, as do a whole lot of apocalyptic cults and denominations across the US, primarily.
It's surprising how often the Old Testament is the part providing all the contents of the sermon.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
Sadly all too true.
There are far too many people these days claiming to be Christians, who don't act terribly Christian.
Four of the Gospels (Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John) all contain something similar to these words purported to come from Jesus:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”So basically, if you're a Christian and you follow the above faithfully, you're all set.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
"So basically, if you're a Christian and you follow the above faithfully, you're all set."
If you are of a denomination which actually follows the above yes.
"Christian" is not a protected title, however, which gives the westboro baptist church and Opus Dei every bit as much nominative validity. You really need to specify the sect and creed before that shit flies. Unfortunately.
Every religion suffers the same, which is why there are fundamentalist militant buddhist sects - something more improbable as a black KKK member or a jewish nazi. Or a hundred sects like the Westboro baptist church which claims to be followers of the Prince of Love while defining themselves entirely by what they hate.
One of the primary reasons I'm agnostic, leaning to atheism or deism at the most, is the possibility for humans to compartmentalize - because what sort of creator builds a species whose primary mental survival tool is the ability to render themselves unable to observe the factual world?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
what man's understanding of what God may have done (from the old testament, especially to Christians) isn't indicative of what Christians, following the teachings of Jesus, should be doing.
“I and the Father are one” (John 10:30)
Seems like father and son should maybe have a talk and get on the same page.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
I would agree if the bible (pick one, there are many) was the result of God telling someone to take a note and they just took divine dictation. It's a collection of works written by a variety of people over many many years. Even then, it was a gathered into a book by people.
Personally I believe that the bible in it's current form tells us more of our understanding of God and how that's changed and grown over time as opposed to any conflict between the father and the son or how he/they would need to "...get on the same page."
Remember:
"Any God small enough for you to understand, isn't big enough for the job."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [just a thought]
"It's a collection of works written by a variety of people over many many years. Even then, it was a gathered into a book by people."
A collection of works which might not even be about any of the abrahamic faiths, at that, being collated from any and every source held sacred at some point or other by hundreds of different tribes. You've got ancient akkadian, babylonian and mesopotamian cuneiform clay tablets, scattered stone carvings, The odd smattering of egyptian and proto-greek or phoenician mythology...
...and at some point in the 15th century the most politically vested set of the unified catholic church sat down and built a book out of what they thought would provide the most solid backdrop to the permanent entrenchment of the church philosophy and called that body of work the Holy Bible.
And then built the inquisition to make sure anyone reading from any of the other scraps of scripture not acknowledged by the pope to be canon had to recant or burn.
"Personally I believe that the bible in it's current form tells us more of our understanding of God and how that's changed..."
In other words, "very little". You can strip the new testament down to bare-bone basics and arrive at more or less what a moral atheist understands to be true as well. But only by first ignoring about 99,99% of what is written there.
The same holds true for many other holy scriptures around the world.
The problem with that core message, whether you look at it from the buddhist or christian view, is that as Uriel-238 has it, below, it's fundamentally a philosophy of enlightenment which assumes that this world is a trial and there's a next one where the winners of that trial finally get to sit back and relax because the bad people aren't their neighbors anymore.
The problem with saying "wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice?" is that, as MLK said, the way evil triumphs is exactly when good people sit back and do nothing. And the nonviolent way only works if your adversaries have a conscience.
Again, human nature works against us there. You often can not convince a nazi, or someone brought up to hatred, because many of them, having been taught hatred since childhood, are today unable to accept any information which would allow them to relinquish it. It's why the white supremacists all lose their shit completely when confronted with the fact that "No, black people aren't inherently inferior." or "The fact that you were born white doesn't mean you're so great you have no real need to get out of the trailer park just to be a winner in life".
Nazi Germany had to be ground into the dust by force of arms - or today every church sermon would start by giving thanks to Der Führer and the content of the rest of it making the westboro cult look like bleeding.heart milquetoast liberals.
The south could not be compelled to change it's ways without a war. In fact, they started one to make sure no one could ever speak against them again.
And their spiritual successors in the US - the KKK and neo-nazi crowd (some of whom, like "Identity Evropa" are out pretending to be "AntiFA" and spurring the violence on in the hopes to smear the black man just a bit more. They too can not be counteracted with words any longer. Not when their sympathizers include large parts of the power structure and the US president appears to be marching, deliberately or not, entirely to their tune.
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Re: ++ [just a thought]
Most people can be selfish, self centered, a--holes. There's no arguing about that. While mankind has developed sufficiently to work with others, we (mostly) haven't gotten over the whole; us vs them tribalism. Something that those in power use to great effect to divide and distract those under them.
No one is saying do nothing, just be measured in your response. At a minimum you should be as the good Samaritan, providing assistance to even those foreign to you.
Then there's the Roosevelt philosophy of;
"Speak softly and carry a big stick -- you will go far."
I do believe though that we should probably stay away from the Operative's ideal in Serenity as illustrated in this exchange with Mal:
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Pharaoh didn't care
To be fair, for Pharaoh, it was Tuesday. (Sopdet if we want to be pedantic.) It might of gotten Pharaoh's attention if there were wasn't a plague infesting one municipal region, if the locusts hadn't swarmed, if there wasn't a firestorm in Athribis, if the southern cropfields weren't blighted. Egypt had all the troubles one would expect for an imperial superpower. When the river running red as blood (possibly with blood) is noted for causing a rebuilding slowdown after the recent Cairo earthquake, it may be hard to notice.
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Re:
Venting anger by burning police property can be cathartic, but is this something you would proudly tell your grandchildren?
I dunno - conservatives somehow reconcile their support for Jesus and Trump, despite him being a morally bankrupt shitbag. Maybe we should ask how they do it...
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Re: Re:
Faust knows.
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Re:
Jesus, clearly, never solved shit.
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Re: Re:
According to the Christian handbook, his father created shit, and piss, and infected the entire animal kingdom with those afflictions.
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Re: Re: Re:
Well that's Old Testament stuff.
'But they also seem to have forgotten that the New Testament is the Christian bible and the Old Testament is the Jewish bible. Please allow me to speak on behalf of my people: "Keep your fucking Christian Right noses out of our reading material!"'
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Re:
Well. Don't police believe that force.and examples work? Why they do flash bangs and raids with scary gear. Oh. You mean when it's on other foot it's wrong? That people cannot let anger.and fear.and outrage cloud judgement ... Only cops can?
I feel like all cops should be put on receiving end of a protest and see how calm they can be.....
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Re: Re:
"...I feel like all cops should be put on receiving end of a protest and see how calm they can be..."
The results are in from that experience. Generally the cops either lose their shit completely or calmly kettle the protesters into a suitable killbox where they can get their daily cardio in swinging nightsticks, with bonus points for cracking skulls.
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Re:
I have some bad news for you.
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Re: wtf?
What is the point of having a police force when citizens are required to constantly make sure they are following the law. Multiply the times a police officer attempts to harm a citizen by the number of citizens and lawyers you seem to think would stop that crime and you will have nobody doing anything but policing the police. Why not just fix the system?
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Re:
"Venting anger by burning police property can be cathartic, but is this something you would proudly tell your grandchildren?"
The current status of Being Black in the US is that you wake in terror at late-night phone calls, fearing that your grandchildren have just died at the hands of a police officer. The people currently rioting have lost all hope. They aren't venting. They are desperate because they've tried the peaceful way and all it brought them was more dead children at the hands of the policemen supposed to protect them.
"For a start, I think a better approach would be a unified, peaceful crowd that stands between a police officer and any of their attempts to harm a citizen."
It's been tried. The result of which has been pepper spray, and the police switching their rubber bullets out for live ones. We're currently on 50 years of this tactic not working.
The one guy with a shot at making it work - MLK - ate a bullet for his trouble, sending the message that being peaceful only means you and your children will keep right on being killed and oppressed.
"Each member of that crowd has their phone recording the scene, and some lawyers at the ready to sue the officer for any misconduct."
This has also been tried. There are plenty of court cases where police officers have shot and killed obviously nonviolent people, right on camera. The DA refused to raise criminal sanction and Qualified Immunity meant the officer walked away without a second hearing.
So you usually can't prosecute a police officer.
And you almost invariably can't sue him either.
"This is an election year, and there is a opportunity to replace some politicians who want to maintain the status quo."
Yeah, and half of the voters are behind the dickbag with the proven history of unrepentant racism, and the other half are -very loosely - assembled behind the DNC's latest attempt to turn put a political windsock into office.
Black people know damn well that if this tidfes over peacefully it'll be right back to status quo, but possibly with some extra protections for the police tacked on since the slim possibility exists that officer Chauvin, at least, may have his wrist slapped. Can't have that.
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Re: Re:
"current status of Being Black in the US is that you wake in terror at late-night phone calls"
What a drama queen.
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Re: Re: Re:
"What a drama queen."
Yeah, that IS the predicted response of the alt-right community who are so damn outraged that black people are upset over being killed for no reason.
It tells us all we need to know that after the video of George Floyd being brutally murdered your response is, mainly, "What a drama queen".
Thanks for telling everyone about the mindset of the racist.
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Jesus and Grandkids
I hold told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world
Jesus' solution to worldly problems such as this is much like that of Buddha's (who saw life as suffering, and in becoming enlightened learned not to mind it so much). It's also the same as the absurdist view, in which Sisyphus is happy pushing his boulder to futility.
But Jesus, Buddha and Absurdist-Sisyphus are not interested in creating civilizations that hold the principles of equality and liberty for all. Rather for them, if we perish in our own toxic waste, if we go extinct during the holocene extinction event never exploring the universe further than our own rock (and a few probes), they are content with this, and advise we seek contentment.
I am not so enlightened, and thus pursue the development of civilization towards mutual happiness. I also hope human beings colonize space and likewise have prosperous happy societies scattered across the stars. There's no reason for it. I'm just sentimental. Also, I really resent bullies.
Venting anger by burning police property can be cathartic, but is this something you would proudly tell your grandchildren?
I suspect those who participated in the Dachau Reprisals were not proud of their choices, but felt they did what they had to do under the circumstances. Note that Floyd is the one police murder we caught, and the officers involved still will get a trial and (if history serves) will be acquitted or given a light sentence, even for murder in cold blood.
Much like the German Freikorps and Schutzstaffel, law enforcement officers throughout the US, from the precinct blues to the specialist departments like the DEA and FBI have not been able to attend to their duties and hold their power with appropriate restraint and discipline. The entire justice system teems with abuse, and ultimately it must be abolished, and its officers seem determined to kill as many innocents as is necessary to convince the public of this. Millions, maybe.
We've had all these conversations in 2014 after the Ferguson unrest and the shooting of Michael Brown. We complained about rowdy protestors and rioting then, and we watched as the police changed their story as facts surfaced warping reality to justify the shooting. But it wasn't caught on video, and the Justice Department assured every benefit of doubt was given to Officer Wilson. And law enforcement officers keep shooting people. Children sometimes. Thousands of dogs which go unreported. They rarely see punishment, and when discharged, they get rehired in a new precinct. I tracked Tamir Rice' killers through three precincts.
Countless deaths later, things are not better, and it's clear that all the good intentions are not going to get us the judicial reform we can no longer wait for. We're in a revolution right now whether we start forcing retirements and blowing up stations, or we don't and wait for the next police-involved killings. But the murders are not going to stop until the public rises up to stop them.
So the people who are smashing police cars are doing no less than smashing the cars of the German SS, and reclaiming bits of the world from the Nazis. And I'd rather see them stop the SS now cold before they get too far along at Dachau.
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Re: Jesus and Grandkids
...Well spoken, that man.
The problem at the heart of it is that a certain type of person can not be persuaded. Many of the nazi camp guards were great fathers, friendly and reliable neighbors, upstanding citizens in every way...except that one part where they took part in genocide because they believed, from the bottom of their hearts, that repulsive though the task might be they were doing what they did for the greater good.
The human ability to compartmentalize information - to lock away one set of facts in their heads so no contrary set of facts can interfere with them - means there's very little to be done about some of the most dangerous people out there.
Officer Chauvin was able to murder a man in cold blood while people watched - and yet it's completely possible that to his white friends and family they'd be left with the impression that "There must be a mistake, that just isn't him".
The bystanding officers have already had family members coming out and saying much the same.
And there we have a big part of the puzzle as to how come so many white people don't perceive the systematic racism. They're never affected by it and their "good friends and family" with odd views never give them the reason to believe those friends or family members would be quite at home with standing over a black kid and cracking their skull with a nightstick for shit'z'n'giggles.
It's why Malcolm X said something about being more afraid of the well-intentioned but ignorant liberal than the openly malicious KKK member.
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Re:
Yes. I mean as opposed to "I stood idly by while police killed thousands of Americans and were greeted with calls for fascist policies by political leaders."
WWJD? God only knows. Jesus showed love but the New Testament ends with the world being destroyed. So, extending Christ's love may result in minor mitigation, but in the end, the dude running the entire show decides only the people that voted for him are worth saving. Not sure that's the narrative we want to pursue, no matter what our religious beliefs.
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Re: Re:
WWJD?
Flipping tables and whipping assholes is not unprecedented.
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Re: Re:
Just an FYI, I’ve heard of some people who believe that Revelations was far more metaphorical than literal. Some think that it’s not the literal destruction of the world but rather a major paradigm shift in the world. Others think it’s just saying that God will save the faithful when the world ends as predicted by many scientists rather than by direct intervention by God.
I, personally, think it was just thrown in for the same reason that Christmas is in December: many pagan religions (as well as Jews) believe the world will end eventually, so just repurpose it to fit Christianity. It’s not exactly unusual in that regard. But, regardless, it’s such a different tone from everything else in the New Testament that I don’t really place the same amount of weight on it’s predictions.
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Book of Revelation
The doomsday interpretation of the Apocalypse of John is actually only one of several interpretations. It gets a lot of traction because, yeah, eschatology is of popular interest. Our big Protestant Evangelical churches like to dwell on it because it draws viewership. And a lot of our far right officials (both elected and appointed) believe in the futurist interpretation and have been using policy to try to start the second advent.
Biblical scholars look at the context in which it was written (in Rome during a time it was illegal to discuss sedition or non-Roman religions) and see it's a bunch of purple prose burying discussion of religion and sedition. Most of the beasty and monstery and diabolic symbolism is pretty obviously pointing at imperial Rome and how we should strike a blow for Freedom and Christianity against the big tyrant.
But that is far less exciting than suggesting it's prophetic, especially if your religious leader is somehow able to decipher particulars of a date or time when we're all going to die.
So far, no-one's guessed correctly and you can mark your calendar so as to celebrate the next day that we didn't die after all.
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It's become plain to see that peaceful protests are the thoughts and prayers of political change, something people call for others to do when they absolutely do not want to change things in any meaningful way.
When they happen, they are applauded and once they're over, their goal is completely ignored by people in power. If they persist longer than the authorities want, everyone involved will get smeared throughout the media with even those who claim to lean left bothsidesing it and reporting propaganda, see the occupy protests, anti war protests, anti brexit protests...
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First and foremost... fuck off...
This is absolutely bullshit. You assume because he passed a counterfeit bill that he is guilty? My white mom had paid with cash at a grocery store a few years ago. She gets her cash only from the bank. It came up as counterfeit. She was pulled aside, cops were called, she explained that she had no idea because the bill looked legit. The cop said it happens sometimes and that the bill was a good one. She left alive... probably because she was a middle-aged white woman and not a black guy...
Educate yourself before you spout off racist nonsense...
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Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
This is just slander. The reason why everything was okay was because your mom played it cool. She didn't become belligerent. She didn't hop in her car and get into a high speed chase. She didn't resist arrest and go limp when a cop tried to put her into the back seat of a squad car. If you dont get into a confrontation, then the chances of harm or death become astronomically small.
Does this excuse the police when they do the wrong thing? Nope, absolutely not. But just be cool for 10 minutes, is all it takes.
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When you want to add a “but” to something you’re saying…
…ask yourself if opening that “but” will expose an asshole.
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
A lot of available video evidence show that the difference in skin colour is a major factor, and to such an extent that black people fear for their lives whenever a cop approaches them.
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
Look at all zero people surprised by Koby's latest embarrassingly wrong opinion based on lies.
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
... my mother has the privilege of playing it cool because society tells her that cops aren't going to kill her in a confrontation. Whereas a black man you have cops shooting them for damn near any reason they so choose. I'm sure you have forgotten about Philando Castile who DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND WAS STILL KILLED FOR IT... I'm sure many people in the black community have not.
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
Read this thread. Look at all of the pictures. Watch all of the videos. And then reconsider that statement.
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1267908849446653956
This has all happened in the past week.
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
But just be cool for 10 minutes, is all it takes for the cops to squeeze the life out of you with a knee on the neck (ok, it probably only took the first 6 minutes, once he stopped talking and the cop couldn't find a pulse, he continued to 'be cool' for another 3.5 minutes with his knee on the dead man's neck).
FTFY...
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
That´s funny, because the surveillance footage shows George Floyd ´playing it cool´ for the entirety of the interaction, but that didn´t save his life. Nor did it save the life of Daniel Shaver, go look up that video while you´re at it. Or how about Philando Castile? I could go on all day. You can find countless videos of people doing everything they can to comply, only to still end up murdered by these trigger happy psychos. These people are literally begging for their lives, trying to do anything they can just to keep breathing, and there you are, struggling to find some tiny rhetorical hair you can split that will justify these atrocities. Give up. No amount of tortured, inane reasonings are going to square this circle. These killings are brutal crimes, period. And even if you haven´t figured that out yet, look outside - the rest of the world has.
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Tamir Rice didn’t even have time to “play it cool” because he was killed two seconds after the cops showed up.
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Re: Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
And that's why a lot of people are very upset, and very few people are defending the police in this case. Most people expected this outcome to be very different than what it was.
And I still stand by my earlier point: that if you do play it cool, then you'll be fine in 99.99% of interactions. It's not some special racial priviledge, anyone can keep cool. You can demonstrate exceptions, but it won't change the fact that it's still the smart way to handle the situation.
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George Floyd “kept cool”. Now he’s dead. If you think race didn’t have anything to do with it, you’re out of your fucking mind.
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Keeping cool. (We're all
Philando Castile had been pulled over forty-nine times and kept cool until he was gunned down in his car. A white person would have been decided too incompetent to drive long before getting pulled over forty-nine times.
On that last and fatal time, they got it right, I guess. Castile was pulled over for a broken taillight. And then shot while keeping cool. I can safely assume he was a practiced master Fonzi by the time the police murdered him.
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Re:
And again, that's why people are upset. Did racism have something to do with it? It sure seems that way, and I haven't heard of a better explanation.
But it does not logically follow that all police are out to kill crime suspects based upon the color of their skin. And that therefore, most whites survive police encounters based upon that. Unilaterally staying calm as a citizen is probably one of the best ways to get a good outcome from a police interaction, and will probably sidestep problems of racism in a vast majority of cases.
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Re: Re:
"most whites survive police encounters based upon that"
White Privilege is a bit more than that.
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Of course they’re not. But combine the paranoia of modern police training — the gist of which is “it’s you vs. them in a war on crime and your one major goal every day is to get home safe no matter what” — with the systemic racism built into the American society and the slow-but-sure infiltration of law enforcement by White nationalists/supremacists (something the FBI warned about in 2006!), and you have the perfect recipe for disparate racial treatment that threatens more Black lives than White lives.
The system of policing within the United States is permanently tainted by racism, going back to its roots in slave patrols. Nobody can undo that, but we can push for change to help mitigate that racism until we can come up with a better system.
But this shit isn’t part of that change. As George Floyd proved, being calm around the cops doesn’t stop them from being violently paranoid about their own safety, especially if they have racist leanings. It can help, but it is no guarantee — and you’d do well to stop talking like it is, lest you make yourself look like even more of a fool.
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Re: Re:
"But it does not logically follow that all police are out to kill crime suspects based upon the color of their skin."
All? No. But it's more than a little damning that every time a police officer finally gets prosecuted for outright murder it turns out that his entire precinct and the chief of police in the city have known about him for years and that he's dragging a list of violations longer than a man's arm behind him.
And not a single police officer in the precinct ever so much as tried to do the right thing.
Quick question for you. Does a white person have to be given The Talk when growing up?
Does a white person "keeping it cool" walk away from a police interaction in great relief over "only" having been beaten and pushed around without reason?
Have you looked at the various twitter feeds of black people who actively tried to cooperate with the police publishing the photos of the bruises of rubber bullets they caught for, you know, standing still and trying not to be offensive while shit was going down in the vicinity?
You haven't. All you've got here is the idea that somehow the US - despite all evidence - doesn't have a problem with racism in the police so massive it renders any dealing with the police more hazardous than encountering a gang of violent criminals if you happen to be black. Drink that in for a minute. Then consider what advise you'd give.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
"And I still stand by my earlier point: that if you do play it cool, then you'll be fine in 99.99% of interactions. It's not some special racial priviledge, anyone can keep cool..."
Tell that to all the black people who did play it cool and were still gunned down like dogs in just the last few years.
Now compare it to how many white people get gunned down like dogs when playing it cool.
If you tell yourself that being White is not a racial privilege in the US you either don't live there, have never visited it, or haven't kept up with the news over the last 15 years.
Universities, think tanks, and even the god-damned FBI have churned out have churned out, for the last few dozen years, studies about racism in the US and it's impact on society. Yet here we have you, being either blind as a bat or continuing the old apologist mantra of "surely it ain't THAT bad".
It is.
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
Actually, it's that's just libel. He wrote it down. :)
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
"But just be cool for 10 minutes, is all it takes."
George Floyd was cool. And yes, it took less than ten minutes for the cops to throw him down, handcuff his unresisting ass, proceed to hold him down, set a knee to his throat, and then slowly, deliberately, choking him to death, not forgetting to check at the end that his pulse had truly stopped, before giving it three more minutes.
In a country where this shit happens at all forget about anyone in the target demographic trusting the police ever again.
Hell, in a sane nation, forget anyone outside of the target demographic trusting a cop ever again. Ironic that we here in europe remember "First they came for the jews, but I was not jewish..." but americans have forgotten how important it is not to let this shit slide.
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
First, this isn't slander. I mean, have you read any coverage of defamation suits here?
Second: George Floyd didn't resist. Even if you argue (wrongly) that he did, he was still held down by the officer's knee on his neck for three minutes after another officer couldn't detect a pulse. Floyd was as compliant as any human could be for almost three minutes and the application of force never changed.
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Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
"Just be cool for 10 minutes" is exactly the right mindset to completely avoid having a physical encounter with law enforcement.
The problem, Koby, is it doesn't allow for one to express one's inner drama queen. And that would prevent Techdirt writers and commenters from indulging in their own drama queen obsessions.
I often wonder: are Masnick's Blue Checkmarks as overwrought and histrionic and effeminately hysterical in meatspace as they are online? If so, life must be continuously difficult for them.
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Re: Re: Re: First and foremost... fuck off...
Your homework is to go through the following Twitter thread of 400+ incidents of police violence in the past week or so, and find one where the person/group being attacked is not "just being cool."
https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1266751520055459847
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Re:
You would still have to jump the qualified immunity hurdle, which at this point is about 9ft tall... The few times cops fail to limbo under is when they try to drive an 18-wheeler through it cause they mistook it for a drive-thru.
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Echo Chamber
Be careful of a 3rd possibility: you are preaching to the choir on techdirt. I, for one, was certain that if I were to comment with disagreement, that I would have been drowned in criticism, instead.
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Re: Echo Chamber
Latest polling numbers regarding the protests, including burning police cars, suggest the echo chamber is getting larger.
https://twitter.com/PpollingNumbers/status/1267941135521067011?s=09
"Do you think the anger that led to these protests are justified?"
Justified 78%
Not Justified 18%
"Given the events around George Floyd, including the burning on a police precinct is..."
Justified 54%
Not Justified 38%
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Re: Re: Echo Chamber
People disagreeing with you does not make them part of an echo chamber. Not saying they or you are right or wrong. I do feel this kind of insulting response to their disagreement is part of the problem.
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Re: Re: Echo Chamber
Meh, other polls show 71% of voters now want to see the National Guard brought in to quash the unrest.
https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2020/06/01181629/2005131_crosstabs_POLICE_RVs_F INAL_LM-1.pdf
Justified unrest? Time to put down the unrest? It's tough to say, and I'm not going to make any predictions. All I know is that I know which side the toast is buttered on around here.
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Re: Re: Re: Echo Chamber
"All I know is that I know which side the toast is buttered on around here."
Gotta run off to your safe space underground bunker?
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Re: Re: Re: Echo Chamber
All I know is that I know which side the toast is buttered on around here.
What does that even mean?
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Re: Re: Re: Echo Chamber
Sorry you got the unbuttered side. The good news is the other side still has butter. So, that's kind of on you. If you want toast buttered on both sides, I can direct you to any number of news outlets who feel the public is best served by generous toppings of butter on both sides of every piece of toast, even if it means being part of the problem.
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Re: Echo Chamber
Definitely an insightful point, but the great part about TD is if you want to post something that might be controversial here is we have the shield of anonymity if we want it. Don't censor yourself because of possible backlash; just say it anonymously. The entire platform of ideas gets better when we have diverse viewpoints. It keeps us honest, even if it does feel like yelling into the wind!
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A not-zero number of commenters dissented with me over my article on censorship/discretion/moderation (a follow-up is in the works based on that dissent), but only a handful of comments were hidden, and the discussions on the rest were relatively civil in comparison to the replies our regular trolls tend to get.
You’re not afraid of “drown[ing] in criticism”. You’re afraid of having to answer that criticism. When criticism of your ideas gets to a point where you can’t justify your ideas any further, you disappear from the conversation. I should know — you did it to me a few articles back.
When I get to a point where I can’t defend/justify my ideas, I may leave someone else’s word as the last word because that’s deserved. I am, however, trying harder to say “fair points” or “fair enough” — not to “get in the last word”, but to signal that I accept the criticisms and will do my best to learn from them. You’ve never once shown the propensity for that.
If you want to criticize me, or Mike, or anyone else here, have the goddamned courage to stand behind that criticism. And when you can’t defend or justify it any further, have the same courage to say “fair enough”. So long as you criticize and argue in good faith, nobody is going to treat you like a troll. But when you run from discussions without addressing valid criticism (or showing that you’ve taken those criticisms to heart), then whine about how you’re afraid of criticism…well, don’t be surprised when you get treated like a troll. They like to hide when presented with uncomfortable realities like “I was wrong”, too.
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Re:
Actually, I have certain time during the day for discussion, and I cannot devote 100% of my day to the forums here. At some point, the discussion has gone on for awhile, where much of everything has been said. So I'm willing to leave it to readers to judge. If you're dissatisfied with getting the last word, then I dunno what to tell you.
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Re: Re:
[citation needed]
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Re: Echo Chamber
The first post in the comments was a criticism and wasn't buried under anything. Maybe you're idea of criticism is just over the top?
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Along similar lines: The peaceful march to Selma in support of the cause of voting rights for Black people itself didn’t change minds. The footage of those peaceful protestors being violently attacked by the police without prior provocation changed minds. Violence isn’t an answer — it’s a question, and in the United States, the answer is almost always “yes”, regardless of how we feel about that.
Don’t tread on me, tread on them
I’ll bring the marshmallows if y’all bring the graham crackers.
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Who is going to reap this?
We are. For the cop cars and cop-shops, taxes. For the looted and burned businesses, insurance premiums and thus prices. Insurance and prices even if your business wasn't looted, burned, just because your business was in the wrong part of town. Rent, because the owner of the building has to pay to fix it. .. or abandon and tear down the building.
Who sowed it?
We did. We failed to keep our eye on the ball. Failed to remind police on a regular basis that we are not their enemy, nor they ours. When they ARE our enemy, we had a hand in their being so.
WE did not come up with a better solution. WE did not ensure that the police departments were held accountable. We let them get away with shit. WE THE PEOPLE. It's more than just words on parchment.
Sure, tearing shit up will make the point that "yeah, we're tired of this". But show me where it will do more than make the police fearful. Show me where it will result in actual changes to policy.
'Cause I'm not seeing the change part.
Maybe it's the flames from the burning cop cars getting in the way.
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Re:
But show me where it will do more than make the police fearful.
Making them fearful is the point. That's what they are not right now.
They don't fear reprisal, prosecution, bad publicity, nothing.
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Re:
At a certain point the cost:benefit ratio of allowing policies of status-quo racism to exist will not outweigh the damage.
Unfortunately, we are a nation that is 'reactive' not 'proactive'. If we were, we'd have invested in infrastructure... we now have crumbling dams. We'd have invested in stopping climate change... now we have mega-droughts and supersized hurricanes. The list goes on...
If the cost of riots are so expensive, the issue of racial inequality just can't be ignored. You are FORCED to react. Once it gets so bad, maybe... just maybe... policies won't just be whitewashed and actually have some meaning.
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Re:
Our taxes won't go up to pay for all the damaged property. It will come out of law enforcement budgets which likely won't change when next they're evaluated. If that means fewer cops then good. We don't fucking need 'em. What we need is law enforcement that protects citizens, not exploits, abuses and even kills them.
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Re:
"Sure, tearing shit up will make the point that "yeah, we're tired of this". But show me where it will do more than make the police fearful. Show me where it will result in actual changes to policy."
Well, it made several million white americans who kept telling themselves shit wasn't that bad sit up and have to face the reality that Yes, shit really WAS that bad. And had been for some time.
Because here's the thing. You're dead right. This is on you. or rather, it's on every white american who chose to put the blinders on and do nothing while a sizeable minority of the citizenry have had to live with being second-class citizens in such mortal fear of the forces supposed to ENFORCE law that they teach their children "The Talk" in the vain hope that doing everything correctly and kowtowing more deeply to the police than any white person ever would, might someday serve to not get them killed.
Against that background - where the social contract only exists based on skin color - tell me what good it does for those not covered by the contract to still abide by law?
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amen fellow traveler.
I did do a ride along with my brother-in-law a few years back. He's a cop in a mid sized southern Michigan city. The short version is: The entire precinct had no issues with using racial slurs (liberally) but when they actually interacted with people they treated a certain (perceived) group of people differently .. and it really didn't seem to track with their words.
Therefore, I'm not positive it's limited to "not being white" (because I am white and have experienced it more than a few times at home too) I think it starts with them thinking you can't defend yourself (i.e. you look 'poor') and when you throw 'not being white' into that situation it gets a lot worse.
My behavior and attitudes have not changed over the years but the way I'm INITIALLY treated by cops is drastically different now that I'm driving a $60k car (I have a led foot).
anyway, that's my 2c
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Re: amen fellow traveler
This is much more accurate than anyone will ever admit. Racism exists and racial profiling exists but classism also exists and so does profiling for that. Qualified immunity, union protection and “respect mah authoritay” attitudes lead to petty tyrants with the power of life or death deciding that a challenge to their authority is a death sentence to the challenger. If you look weak to the police, they can and will behave badly. It is seen over and over again in black communities, brown communities, and poor white communities. If you don’t look like you are the right kind of person( color or class), you will be abused. While living in a upper middle class neighborhood in an upper middle class suburb, my husband (white but who looks like a biker stereotype) reported his observation of a car theft in progress to the police after he scared the guy off. He gave a statement over the phone to the officer and they caught the suspect and took a report from our neighbor (it was his car that was almost stolen) and since my husband was also in the alley they wanted a another statement from my husband - only unlike our neighbors statement, they wanted his full name, birthdate, DL license number and the responding officer wanted a “tour” of our house to see where my husband had seen the attempted theft (our backyard). my husband politely refused stating he had already given a statement over the phone and went inside. Two hours later (1:00 am) a different officer knocked on the front door and again wanted a statement from my husband. What they really wanted was enough information to run my husband through the system. They were more concerned about how he looked and the opportunity to run him through the system than anything else, because he didn’t look like he was supposed to look in our neighborhood. So called “white” privilege only extends to being the right kind of white. fyi this is only one of a long string of incidents with police, due to the way he looks (he permanently documented most of his poor decisions in his youth via tattoos) don’t discount classism and class based prejudice when discussing abuse of authority by police. We just don’t get to mention it because we are white and therefore invisible.
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The problem with peaceful protests...
Despite historic examples like Gandhi and MLK, the problem with modern peaceful protesting is that governments have evolved their tactics when dealing with peaceful protesters. They have become skilled at deflecting and muting the protesters' message. Some tactics include "free speech zones" away from the event that is actually being protested, and management of the news cycle.
I fell victim to this myself in noting the "few good apples" that were cooperating with protesters and avoiding violence. It's not that the good apples aren't important, but if you look at the overall reporting on the protests, most reporting on peaceful protests isn't highlighting the grievances of the protesters, it's highlighting the forbearance and tolerance of the police that hug, march with or dialog with the protesters.
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Re: The problem with peaceful protests...
One of the issues with a "peaceful" protest is that there are more bad apples running around out there just looking for opportunities. And, I'm not even talking about cops. As soon as a peaceful protest lasts more than an hour or so, and especially if it starts to run into the night, the really bad opportunistic apples start coming out for the burning and looting. There is no way to visually determine who is a good apple protesting for the cause, and who is a bad apple looking to start trouble, start a fire, and then start the looting to try to get away with grabbing something of value for nothing during the disturbance while the cops are busy trying to protect or suppress the protesters.
The Posse Posse Comitatus Act (of 1878) prohibits the use of the Armed Services on US soil. However; the Armed Services by definition recognizes only the designated organizations of the US Government. It doesn't recognize the newly ARMED police forces that show up in MRAPs, body armor, smoke grenades, and machine guns to shoot with at the crowds. So let's get the newly armed police departments classified as Armed Services since they have all of the equipment of the actual Armed Services and not let them operate on US soil.
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Re: Re: The problem with peaceful protests...
All of the equipment and none of the training. Plus their rules of engagement are definitely much less strict than the Armed Service in a war zone.
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Re: Re: The problem with peaceful protests...
I'm willing to believe that some people, consumed by rage, actually committed crimes as part of their protest during the first couple of days/nights. But anyone looting, etc. after that time was doing it as a cold, calculated act either for their own benefit or to tar the protesters as an uncontrolled mob.
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"Anyone looting after the first couple of days"
...includes all those who realize nothing will change if they let the fires wither. And Floyd's name becomes just the latest addition to all the police-involved murder databases.
Meanwhile it is only a matter of hours before the jackboots start looking for innocent necks to crush, off-camera if they can help it.
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I don't want to see business owners victimized by opportunists but I think a few burning cop cars is a small price to pay for equality and serious police reform.
A cop car on fire does not hurt a business owner. Why aren't you confronting that price?
I'm sorry, but you cannot order riots à la carte. You want the parts of riots you like (damaging city/police property), you have to accept the parts that you don't (destruction of private property, assault and injury of innocent people).
You have to own it all. At least be honest about the fact that your desire for police reform outweighs your respect for other people's property rights and safety.
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Re:
At least be honest about the fact that your desire for police reform outweighs your respect for other people's property rights and safety.
I'm fine with waiting for the results of a thorough investigation before I make the judgement that the looters and rioters are not agent provocateurs placed there to make the protesters look bad.
Waiting for all the facts is what I hear every time a video surfaces that paint police in a bad light. Might as well wait for more video footage before making the call that these aren't paid actors, funded by some nefarious individuals.
Just trying to espouse a conservative viewpoint...
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Buildings and the things within them can be replaced if they’re destroyed. Cars can be replaced if they’re torched. People can’t be replaced if they’re killed.
Again: I don’t condone rioting and property destruction, but if you think protecting property is more important than protecting people, you need to ask yourself what holding that thought in your head says about you.
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Re:
False choice. I can value black lives AND property. Don't indulge what about ism. Trump tactics.
I appreciate the candor, now I know the enemy. It's the person who can't or won't distinguish between protest and lawlessness. I did not think such people were real, that they were an invention of the far right, but I stand corrected.
That lawlessness may advance your agenda does not justify lawlessness. I unoquivally support the protestors. Cops have valued their lives at about a 1000x premium over the lives of black people. If a black person looks at then sideways, they feel justified in putting that person's life at risk. Deplorable. The risk allocation is completely off, cops are trained to get home to have dinner with the family that evening, no matter what that takes. The slightest perceived risk is immediately shifted to the public, multiplied by 1000. That is the wrong calculus, and must be corrected.
By the way, do you think looters are looting with the purpose of advancing an agenda? If you do not, you are advocating using them for yours, without acknowledging their own agency. They are just as much your pawns as anyone else's.
If they are looting for an agenda, what they are advocating for is revolution. You want change, work with. If you want revolution, tear it all down. Fine. Just be honest.
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Re: Re:
" I can value black lives AND property."
In the US of today that becomes harder by the day. Has, since the civil war.
The current situation is ironically akin to when the GWB administration were caught in the conundrum of Saddam Hussein and hie "human shield" strategy. If black people protest there will be riots, and property owners are harmed.
Thus, they should abstain from rioting and quietly keep watching the police, even more encouraged by the non-events due to their latest overreach, pile on the racism and fortress mentality even thicker. That's the argument right now?
Honestly, the problem here is, ultimately, caused by the community. Because the police? Those guys in Blue nominally meant to enforce the law? They are the employees of the city.
If the city has fled any and every opportunity to seriously audit their own police force and as a result of that said police force has turned into a morass of racist serial killers with a hard-on for killing black people at will then accountability belongs, in the end, with the city as a whole.
Unfortunately this is the US, where "The buck stops here" is yesterdays motto and todays motto instead "I take no responsibility at all".
You have several good points. Don't forget to add the responsibility of the community employing the police to watch and censure those bloody watchmen.
These riots, as every other race riot, doesn't just indicate the police are the bad guys. They indicate the shared guilt of the whole of the society which couldn't be arsed to train their own watchdogs properly.
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Re: Re: Re:
I think you bring up a good argument in support of smaller governments. The cities have become too large so that they no longer feel a responsibility to serve all of its citizens. Since budgets are lumped together, there is no way for segments of a city to have an impact on how their tax dollars get spent.
I live in a smallish town. We have annual town meetings where the town's budget is reviewed for each department along with finance committee recommendations. We decide whether to purchase a new cop car or to hire another policeman. Anyone at the meeting can flag an item on the budget. Once flagged, it is opened for discussion and people can air their reasons for increasing or decreasing the funding. If the police were to try the tactics that the larger cities feel free to use, I have no doubt that the people in my town would reduce their budget at the next town meeting or even remove their funding all together. In essence, the voters in my community have a method to hold the police accountable to them. It would be great to see whether a similar method could be implemented for larger cities. I agree that we need to have some method for enforcing accountability there than what exists today.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I think you bring up a good argument in support of smaller governments."
Decentralization might be a good thing, yes, with more power granted to local municipalities...
...but in the end it's not a problem of big government. If that was the case european nations would have the same issues you do. And it's pretty telling that although there are riots, the sort of shit we regularly see happening in the US does not happen here. You've simply got the same issue the Weimar republic had. You are a republic with a high degree of voter apathy.
In theory a republic is a decent style of government. It dilutes direct mob rule with an entrenched structure hard to move or change the direction of. Set up to work through checks and balances. But that breeds a huge frigging problem right there - for that republic to work and those checks and balances to actually check and balance, the overwhelming majority of the citizenry MUST be involved in the process.
When that part fails, as it did in Weimar and has done in the US, what you get is a long row of increasingly inept career politicians backed by parties unable to realize that factual reality demands for them do go beyond merely keeping their seats - followed by the final desperation where the only minority voices still arsed to vote finally elect a despotic strongman.
There's no problem getting the city or county to work right - half the citizens know their representative personally and aren't shy of telling him or her that s/he's being an ass and needs to fix <whatever>.
But to get a nation to work either build a government capable of catering to the needs of the citizenry - in the form of a direct democracy, the way dozens of successful european nations have.
Or, make your republic work by making it fscking important enough to partake in the political debate that 9 out of 10 americans become both informed and motivated to go cast their ballots at every level for something more relevant to their beliefs and needs than a friggin ficus plant.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As an addendum I'd like to add that where you are currently going is where Europe is probably headed for, next. Our democracies and republic in europe were doing just fine...until the EU came. Now the brownshirts are once again on the upsurge, no small thanks due to the fact that the european citizenry is too many generations removed to remember it's important to get to the ballots and say "Not In My Name".
Americans usually make a bad call when it comes to whether government should be Big or Small. The real issue is whether the government governs too many people.
If the US can't get it's voter participation up to 90% it would be in a far better place if the states just split up and recombined to become, say, ten new countries instead. Right now the vision of the founding fathers, of a government which could not grind the individual to dust, is as dead as the smithsonian T-rex.
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Are you saying there are dozens of European nations that currently have a direct democracy?
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"Are you saying there are dozens of European nations that currently have a direct democracy?"
As opposed to a republic? Yes.
Haven't counted them exactly, but In my little corner of the world alone there are, at the very least, four in close proximity.
The point is that as long as you have a high voter turnout on every level a republic works. Once you no longer have that your republic goes all Weimar on you.
A more direct democracy means the structure of elected representatives is inherently more unstable and they need to work that much harder to retain power.
The old US-style conservative often made sense (note that I use past tense on that, alas) in that they assumed, rightly, that the citizenry would often find their voices conspicuously muted by the time they hit Capitol. Too bad they made the mistake of conflating government power with government size. It's the former which causes all the actual harm. You can trim a flabby government - but that's not as easy when the government is all toned muscle.
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Which ones?
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Mea Culpa - three; Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
You could argue they're nominal monarchies but I doubt that flies in practice with the king by law being restricted from politics.
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I can see the difference between the two. I won’t, however, shed tears over the loss of property in general. Not to say I don’t feel bad for small business owners who have to deal with the aftermath of their businesses being wrecked, or people whose sole method of transportation is gutted by a fire. But given the broadly general choice between property being destroyed and a life being taken, I’d prefer we protect the person instead of the property.
I believe at least a not-zero number of White people participating in the looting and destruction are doing so with an agenda in mind — specifically, the Boogaloo. (Yes, it’s a real thing.) I also believe a not-zero number of cops are participating for their own motives. (True story: At least one Baltimore cop used the Freddie Gray riots as an excuse to loot pharmacies so they could later sell the stolen prescription drugs.) But in general, I believe the rioting and destruction is an expression of anger and frustration that is senseless and illogical yet perfectly understandable.
Oh, I’m sure the Boogaloo assholes want a revolution — but not the kind that most people would ever support, unless they’re equally as racist as the aforementioned assholes.
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Re:
I own it all. I want a la carte riots. Maybe I can't have them but I can state what I want. There will be collateral damage. But that financial blood is still on the government's hands. Ample opportunities have been given for governments to effect meaningful changes in their police departments. In almost every case, these opportunities have been ignored. If businesses want to pin the blame on anyone, they can look to their civic leaders and PDS who failed to protect them from society and the actions of police officers.
I'm not going to sugarcoat this shit with a bunch of hedging. And I'm not going to pretend targeting cops with protests/riots won't harm people not directly involved. But the blame still rests on the officers and those that continually protect them, not the people who are sick of a status quo that has failed to respect them or their lives.
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I appreciate the calm reasoned response after that post.
I'll will open this by saying simply that I do disagree with your thoughts that we're at a point where this kind of destructive response is somehow ok. I honestly feel that you are ignoring half of history to pretend that nothing has changed or that we are somehow in the same place we were back in the days of slavery or even segregation.
I do agree that in some parts of this country things are still really bad. I still feel they are better than they used to be but not by much. It disgusts me to no end to see how the black population is generally treated in Chicago. But I can say that that is not true of most places outside of there.
The idea that peaceful protests do nothing is nonsense. No they do not bring about change quickly, but they do bring about change better than violence in any case where change is still possible without violence. The violence in these protests today is not changing hearts the way you want them to change. Many people are sadly going to turn against you for quite frankly very good reasons. This doesn't make them racist. It simply means they believe that rampant violence against everyone in the area was not an ok response to this. They are ok disagreeing with you on that. Any attempt to insult them for thinking that is wrong and again will only turn hearts and minds against you. And they are not wrong for turning against you on this.
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Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what we want.
If one of the purposes of the protests is police reform, there is a lot of shooting ourselves in the foot going on. There are things that will reform law enforcement, and things that will not only just piss them off, but make the argument for stronger policing. Violence will beget violence, and it seems that for at least the shot term, non violence also begets violence. That has to stop, and I think that like more speech is the cure for bad speech, more non violence is the cure for more violence. To that end here are some does and don’s that I think could make a difference. First the don't s:
Things that help the police state are:
Rioting
Looting
Attacking police officers
Attacking police stations
Attacking police vehicles
Not only will those actions tend to enrage those that legally carry guns and other weapons, but have a tendency to hold the citizenry accountable as they will be the ones who pay for the damage done.
And now some do’s:
Things that will help reform the police state are:
Peaceful protests, and more peaceful protests when the police attack peaceful protesters
Make reasonable arguments on social media, send many emails to representatives, make your interest in peaceful resolution a top priority, make your representatives aware that you will work against them if they do not act in the peoples interest rather than the interests of special interest groups
Reducing the power of public employee unions (to my mind elimination would be better, but then the legislators would have to introduce some strong but reasonable laws that cover public employment fairness)
Holding the upper echelons of agencies accountable for the actions of their subordinates
Hold prosecutors and their grand juries accountable for failing to discipline police officers
Make clear that while a presumption of innocence exists until someone is found guilty, a badge does nothing to add to that presumption
View tough on crime political candidates with a very cautious eye, but be careful that their opponents are not just snowflakes on a crusade to help just those whom they see as being under served as opposed to everyone being under served. (aka overly woke).
Force the Federal Government to uphold its responsibility to protect civil rights, which means get the DoJ and FBI to do their jobs. In order to accomplish this means that appropriate choices need to be made at election time. Since it seems that neither of the two leading presidential candidates will have the will or capacity to accomplish this, then the choices made for congressional positions will become more important. Congress holds the purse strings. If the President won’t do the job of protecting citizens, then cut off the money until they do.
Protecting officers who report or prevent other officers who do bad things
Get the courts to punish judges who allow perjurous testimony from police officers to stand as well as making perjury a fire-able offense.
Create a Federal Law Enforcement license required for all law enforcement personnel, even at the municipal level which is automatically rescinded upon termination and reviewed with a bias toward rescinding upon an officers suspension.
Get Congress to redefine Qualified Immunity, Good Faith Exception, basic knowledge requirements for Law Enforcement Officers (they must know the laws they enforce), reform asset forfeiture to require a felony conviction for appropriate behaviors along with the requirement to prove the assets were in fact proceeds of that behavior, and the purpose of policing (protect and serve requirement IS the purpose), and order courts to make the first instance of a Qualified Immunity a clearly established notice that like behavior is not allowed, even if the circumstances are dissimilar.
Establish a federal control over the use of SWAT teams, no knock warrants.
Walk back those things that allow for warrantless action by law enforcement like the FISA courts, The Patriot Act, third party data is not open season, and the others that allow for snooping
Establish safeguards that will expose and prevent parallel construction
I am fairly sure that I have missed a few items in both the above lists, but it is a start. Replicating, or inducing bad behavior is not going to get us a win. Coordinated, cool headed, rational going after the root causes just might.
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Re: Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what we want.
And when the current president orders the use of force to clear peaceful protesters so he can take a walk to photo opportunity, instead of listening, the rational cool headed approach looks like a lost cause.
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Re: Re: Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what we want.
Being cool headed means you work on the next election cycle rather than lose your cool and rant about things that can only change at the next election cycle. We had a shot at ridding ourselves of Trump (though I am not certain Pence would be better, different maybe, but not better), and our representatives let us down. Election cycle.
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Your president has shown what he thinks of peaceful protest, and your politicians remain silent. That makes electoral change look like a forlorn hope. Also, the cops have shown they will turn any protest violent if they so wish.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what
"your politicians remain silent"
Mine? I don't think so.
There are many politicians speaking out about this, don't lie.
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How many have the power to enact change? How many of them are Republican?
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Well, yeah - details details.
I was responding to the lie only.
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Re: Re: Re: Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what we want.
How many more election cycles do we have to go through to get all of these problems fixed? So far they're only getting worse, term by term. While we wait, people are exploited and killed every day. You're saying all of that is acceptable and we should just wait and hope things some day get better?
How about fuck you?
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Depends, on several things. The first of which is can we get people to think for themselves rather than toe a party line? While I think the next presidential election is lost, regardless of who wins (unless there is a dark horse Democrat who comes out of nowhere) that will take at least two, presidential elections. But the congress controls the money and that can have great influence on what the Executive does or doesn't do. The Senate only replaces one third of itself each time with six year terms, and the House gets two year terms, so complete replacement will take some time. However, statements can be made with judicious selections this next time. Politicians can be told the writing is on the wall, do for us rather than against us or else.
But not unless we get many, many more people to think for themselves.
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Then we're screwed. Many of those who believe they think for themselves really don't. And those who don't think for themselves will never change.
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"The first of which is can we get people to think for themselves rather than toe a party line?"
Your argument is essentially that if more americans cared enough to think and vote shit would get fixed. Well, I agree.
Here's the problem. The people getting shafted all try to vote, every time. But those of them not disenfranchised, too discouraged by the nigh-impossibility in some states to get a citizen's registration if you're black, working too many jobs to realistically make it to the ballot booth on voting day, or too damn scared to show up when the local white supremacists are around filming every black person who dares to claim their right...
...well, those few do get drowned out by the citizens who have basic safety from the police and are all going "Fuck you, got mine" about the problems of other people.
"But not unless we get many, many more people to think for themselves."
So. How many centuries is a large ethnic minority supposed to try the nonviolent solution and fail while having to teach their children the best way to avoid getting murdered by bad cops before you'd agree that the nonviolent solution turned out to be...nonviable?
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Ad Notam black people have waited for their rights for a few centuries already.
I think you need to understand that the patience you speak of, and the "proper way of doing things" has failed. Repetitively. Again and again. For centuries.
The advice "Let's keep doing what has abysmally failed for so long" isn't really helpful. Burning stuff until the entire US needs to understand they either sit up and help, or watch the war coming right into their living rooms might. It's the one thing which hasn't been tried as much, for as long.
Historically an oppressed people only gain their full rights through force of arms. It would be very nice if the US could be the first exception to this rule. But history leaves little hope of that, and the actions of the government and establishment in the last twenty years alone only underscores the lack of hope.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what
"all of these problems fixed?"
All of these problems? Whose list of things to fix are we going to be working to? Who gets to say whether it is indeed fixed?
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Who knows? There is no counter-asshole leadership, no organization. So we get riots and looting and burning instead. Obviously things need to be fixed but without leadership nothing ever will.
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All I'm sayin is do not bundle solutions. That never works.
You know how politicians like to build their unified theory of everything legislation, it turns into a huge gravy train which missing the mark every time.
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"You know how politicians like to build their unified theory of everything legislation, it turns into a huge gravy train which missing the mark every time."
On the contrary, the gravy train always arrives at the Pork Barrel where it was designed to go. Every time.
The main issue is that the citizenry tend to elect politicians whose intent are to design the train heading for the pork barrel, every time. Politicians who actually care are considered dangerous liberals and - like Bernie Sanders - not given the chance.
You get the politics you chose. And reap what you sow.
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Election Cycle
Biden is not going to reform the justice system. Biden is playing what would Obama do and Obama let the police walk all over the margins. That was Ferguson.
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Re: Election Cycle
"Biden is playing what would Obama do and Obama let the police walk all over the margins. That was Ferguson."
Ironically that one thing the conservatives and the alt-right are silent on, because they just can't make themselves applaud those things Obama did which they really liked.
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Re: Re: Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what we want.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Feels kinda like that's the situation we're in right now.
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Re: Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what we want.
Replicating, or inducing bad behavior is not going to get us a win.
At some point, you need to communicate in a language that your opponent understands. I see little problem in giving a militarized police force that views the populace as the enemy an opportunity to see how well that philosophy works out in reality.
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Not so fun being on the OTHER side of that mindset for once
"The public is the enemy! The public is the enemy! The public is the enemy! ... wait, what, why are members of the public treating us as enemies all of a sudden!?'
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Reform
All the reform options on the above bits have to be done by groups of elected officials who are easily blocked by tough-on-crime officials who would rather pack away all the lowlifes and losers to concentration camps, and getting the public to respect commons against their own personal gain.
That is not going to happen. And we've watched it happen for a long time now. We'd have to think about what we're going to do different this time that will push it through.
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Re: Eye for an eye isn’t going to get us what we want.
I appreciate your thoughtful response, but I do want to argue about "inducing violence." At this point, peaceful protests are being greeted by excessive force. So, assuming peace will be met with peace is getting no one anywhere.
The heat is slowly dying down, but the calls for military intervention are increasing. Police officers are treating peaceful protesters just like they'd treat looters.
Reform efforts are important. But fighting the system solely by engaging with civic leaders on their own terms isn't going to move the dial far enough or fast enough. My argument is that years of doing stuff the way government officials would prefer us to do them hasn't brought us very far.
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That fact doesn't mean they're not working. It is possible that exactly that violent response to peaceful protest could swing public opinion enough to start seeing some change. I'm not saying that's definitely going to happen, but I think it's off base to conclude that since police are meeting peace with violence that means peace won't work. Which may or may not be exactly what you're trying to say but just wanted to mention it.
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Your point is valid. It may effect change that wouldn't be brought otherwise. But I think the mixture of violent/peaceful is showing police for what they are.
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At this point, bad faith has been shown by our institutions.
If our demonstrators / looters choose to cooperate with the society (e.g. choosing to stay peaceful or cease protesting for the benefit of the society) they do so knowing full well too little will change, and more people will die to police violence.
It's a non-negotiable situation. The corruption of the justice system is pervasive, and the corruption of the courts supports the corruption of the justice department which supports the corruption of law enforcement. Reforming that mess would take centuries, assuming we had legislatures who were actually willing to do it. (Which we don't.)
Any concessions made by Minnesota or by the Federal government is only putting a bandaid on a cancer. In the meantime, our police unions are right now wondering how difficult it would be to systematically wipe out the forty million Blacks in the US, plus anyone else who is too brown or otherwise annoys them too much. Bob Kroll the president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, and notorious enough to have his own wikipedia page totally has Nazi ambitions to that effect, and he has friends.
Whether we know it or not, the revolution has started. It's just a matter of when the non-police start shooting back in an organized manner.
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REAP!
Here's hoping we all reap an improved society. REAP!
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Excellent points all, sir
One other aspect I believe plays into this is the bullshit "Qualified Immunity" law. It shouldn't matter if you're a civilian or a cop or a soldier.
It shouldn't matter if you're black, white or some nice shade of heliotroupe.
If you take someone's life, you should be prosecuted. Period.
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Re: Excellent points all, sir
As is being pointed out by Scott Greenfield Qualified Immunity elimination won't be the panacea many think it will be. First off, it merely protects officers from civil suits, not from prosecution. Then, if one wins the civil suit, those officers tend to be indemnified by the municipalities they work for. So yes, they should be prosecuted, and we need to take a serious look at how prosecutors go about their business when so many horrific actions by police are not found to be horrific by grand juries (under the control of prosecutors) or by courts with regular juries where the prosecutors control how evidence is presented.
Prosecutors have absolute immunity, so we need to handle them differently. They call those different things elections.
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A slightly different perspective...
I have viewed video of numerous confrontations that occurred during the past several days and one characteristic stood out in every one: protesters were dressed in casual clothes; cops were dressed in battle gear and armed to the teeth. Having been in similar situations, I found my immediate reaction was fear, followed by anger at the imbalance of power.
The imbalance of power is, of course, intentional. No law enforcement officer in his or her right mind would confront an excited crowd without protective gear. And there are generally more protesters than enforcers. There is no reason for the enforcers to be confrontational unless there is an immediate threat to persons or property. However, if the enforcers take any threatening action, the crowd will be ignited, and the battle is joined.
Crowds can often be controlled without firearms and tear gas. Firehoses are quite effective. So are sandwiches and cold drinks!
[During the Vietnam War riots I witnessed one police officers remove his helmet, walk half way towards the protesters, and sit down in the middle of the street. It took a while, but soon one protester walked out and sat down opposite that officer. Another officer joined them, and then a few more protesters, and it wasn't long until the only people still screaming were the few that instigated the entire event. They were ignored. I only saw that once, but it's burned into my memory.]
Unfortunately, the government actions at Lafayette Square have now polarized the entire the situation so thoroughly that it's now gone from anger over a senseless murder to anger about a repressive government. If the President were actually to put our armed forces on the streets outside D.C., there's enough anger and pain to result in a revolution.
I would suggest a stronger commitment to a collaborative and cooperative reduction of tension... We've all been hurt by a terrible pandemic; a revolution would make the pandemic seem like a common cold.
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Re: A slightly different perspective...
No law enforcement officer in his or her right mind would confront an excited crowd without protective gear
Well, not unless it's a white MAGA crowd: https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1256941104383045632
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Re: Re: A slightly different perspective...
It's almost as if the police know which crowds are likely to call them sir, treat them with respect, and not get violent … and which crowds will torture dogs, throw Molotov cocktails, smash business owners with 2x4s, vandalize, loot ...
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Re: Re: Re: A slightly different perspective...
The former group: the peaceful protesters
The latter group: the Police
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Plagues are historically unrest multipliers
Rome was routinely beset by plagues. It was also beset by periods of conservative pro-senate, anti-popular pushes, commonly ending in riots and violence and populist movements. They were very stabby times, and not just on the Senate floor.
Maybe if the states weren't fighting to keep their PPE from being seized by FEMA for ???
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Re: Plagues are historically unrest multipliers
What’s ppe?
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Re: Re: Plagues are historically unrest multipliers
Pandemic Protection Equipment - Masks, sanitizer, basic stuff needed to disinfect and filter.
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Re: Re: Re: Plagues are historically unrest multipliers
Close - it's "Personal protective equipment." You get the meaning right, but both the term and the equipment itself is used by your paramedic or nurse even when there's no pandemic going on.
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Mea maxima culpa.
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Very well spoken. I have also wondered 2 things ...
Would civil rights reform have happened if we only had MLK, but not the Black Panthers? We often fetishize King's contribution, but forget the Black Panthers were in daily gun fights with the police. Without the threat of violence from the Panthers, would the peace offered by MLK have taken hold? The Panthers showed that white power could be challenged directly and that things could get much worse for white people.
Also, in a more modern context, I feel that the internet has changed how peaceful protests feel. Now that opinions are democratized and everyone has a potentially broad platform, peaceful protests feel like not that big of a deal. So what if you marched with a sign, I was retweeted by thousands! I'm old enough to remember pre-internet and protests back then seemed to be a bigger deal. They were all over the news; now I'm confident massive protests slide by with near zero coverage. I think that someone willing to march or sit-in back in the day got noticed - it was like, wow these people are serious. Now, I see that we don't take movements seriously unless they are willing to go beyond peaceful protest.
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About that:
If the only image you have of the Black Panthers is of violent Black militants, you’ve been manipulated by a largely White-centric view of history. Take a few minutes today to unlearn some of that shit.
The U.S. government didn’t pass the Civil Rights Act until a week after MLK was killed — and the passage happened while several riots were happening around the country. MLK offered peace and co-existence in exchange for an end to White supremacy, and he got shot in the fucking face for it.
All I’ve seen on the news for the past few days is coverage of the protests happening not only in all 50 of the United States, but in cities around the world. You’re looking in the wrong places if you’re not seeing that coverage.
That’s because, back in “the day”, people who participated in such protests were literally risking their lives to protest against racial injustice. But when the cops and the non-cop racist jackoffs aren’t willing to kill because they’ll end up in jail (or worse), you don’t see the level of violence that was visited upon, say, the people who marched to Selma.
When peaceful protests go unheard…well, you know what MLK said about riots.
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Re:
Kind of. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act (1965) both passed during King's lifetime (though there was serious and sustained opposition to both; CRA64 was filibustered for 54 days before it finally passed). It was the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that was passed during the riots after he died.
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was significant, and all the civil rights laws of the 1960s faced serious opposition and passed amid civil unrest. But there was landmark civil rights legislation that passed before King's death, too.
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True. But the cornerstone of the CRA was the Fair Housing Act included with it, which MLK had lobbied for throughout 1966 (and, presumably, until his death). Nobody in Congress had the desire to pass that act until the riots after MLK’s assassination. So while King did live to see a fair bit of civil rights legislation passed, he near-literally had to die for the rest of it to pass.
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Looks like the charges got upgraded.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/500949-chauvins-charges-upped-to-second-degree-murder-three -other-officers
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This isn't a movement. This is a fire.
We had the same conversation in 2014, and I'm wondering if we had the same conversation in 1992. Rioting doesn't do any good.
Rioting is the result of mass bad faith in the society. It's the result of people who feel they have nothing to lose. It's not a planned operation, but force of nature. An outburst. A storm. And putting them down like zombies or rabid dogs will only reinforce the hopelessness, and draw more people into the riot.
You'll see the planned responses in the form of mass police sabotage campaigns, suicide bombings, assassinations and skyscrapers toppling. Then you'll know the resistance is organized and they still have no fucks to give.
Right now, we've established there is nothing for it. The police are going to continue to kill people (Blacks and Latins, disproportionately. Also crazies.), and we're telling BLM to go through proper channels like we do whistleblowers and white hats, knowing full well that proper channels don't actually make things better. They just sequester grievances into a toxic waste dump.
These riots may calm down, but then more people will die under laughing jackboots until another thing happens we can't help but look at, and it will explode even bigger. During the French Revolution riots, crowds were ripping people literally apart.
It's time for improper channels. It's time for violence, not because violence will make things better -- no, in fact it will mostly make things worse until a lot more people are dead -- it's time for violence because all the other alternatives demonstrably do too little, and because the jackboots march on and people keep getting beaten and murdered.
There's nothing left to say in this conversation until the police are abolished, until the state justice system is brought down at its core. Maybe we'll erect another one in its place. Maybe.
The society has failed. We can go fascist and process the lowlifes and losers to sustain morale, or we can disband the current system for another one. But we've run out of attempts to reform what we got.
If you want to help, get started on the new Constitutuion. I recommend a sortition and wording a computer couldn't misinterpret. Without a plan in advance we'll go through a dozen military dictatorships, one overthrown after the next, until everyone is too tired of shooting each other. Maybe Napoleon will establish some basic rights, but don't count on it.
PS: Don't forget, we're also fighting a plague, and in the meantime drowning in our own toxic waste.
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Peace Officers' Don't Give A Shit About Peace.
And there hangs the problem! Especially when they get nothing less than encouragement and nothing short of praise!
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Did peaceful protests REALLY fail?
First off, thank you for posting a couple of interesting articles. I would like to respond to today's article by disagreeing with you that peaceful protests have not brought about change and to say why. As someone replied to the comment you cited in this article, they said that is was the riots that caused LBJ to sign the civil rights bill. But was that really the case? Or, instead, did the riots act to ACCELERATE the passage of a bill that was already in the works?
I would argue that it was the on going peaceful protests that did the bulk of the work that made that bill get signed into law. To discount their part in the process is like saying the guy who took the ball over the last yard for a touchdown did it all by himself and didn't need the other team members who carried the ball the other 99 yards.
Civil society exists only because people agree to accept a comment set of rules to live by. Those rules dictate who has what power and what freedoms we are willing to give up in order to live peacefully with others who may or may not think and act like we do. If the vast majority of the society's members are happy with the existing rules, why change them? It is the responsibility of those who are unhappy to build consensus among the other members for changing the rules they don't like. This is what MLK and Gandhi did. They worked to get the word out to the other members of society in a way that showed the need for change. They used effective methods to build consensus. He encouraged people to add their voices to those asking for change. When enough voices speak up, politicians take notice.
The types of problems we are dealing with today are very much like those of the past. Those in power want more power and will continue to take it as long as we let them. However, that thievery can only go on so long before those being robbed say, "Enough!" As more and more cases of police abuse go unpunished, as more and more people get robbed of their property and life savings, as more and more injustice occurs, the more the members of that society see that the rules need to be changed. They not only see the need for change, they become motivated to ACT for change. I believe that this is what is right happening now.
It is really sad that the full "Eyes on the Prize" is not available (unless you were someone who taped it off the air when it originally got broadcast) and that MLK's descendants are more concerned about reaping copyright profits because that series was highly instructive and could serve as a blueprint for building societal consensus for achieving desired change. I saw it and would be all for making it required viewing in school. There is much to learn from it and that is probably why those in power would prefer it not to be seen. If the peaceful protests seem to have not achieved the desired goals, the bigger question is, "Why?"
For me, I think in part that they have somewhat succeeded. Again, many more people are aware of these problems than 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Partially because things have gotten worse, but also because they are getting more attention. Again, you need to build awareness and consensus. I see more cries for change than before. What we need now is a LARGE peaceful protest (in the millions) wherein those in favor of change demonstrate that the politician who does not help to bring that change will be replaced with one who will listen to them. It IS time to do away with qualified immunity, civil asset forfeiture, and militaristic police. Lets see if we can make our representatives know this needs to happen.
Rioting and looting only plays into the hands of those in power. It gives them justification for their violence and gives them reasons to implement more surveillance and more control. I will admit that the current spate of riots have been a wake up call for many people. They have learned that the police will abandon them in their time of need, that they might see their businesses and lives destroyed by criminal opportunists who see Floyd's death as an excuse to profit. Gun sales are soaring. Rioting and looting only serves to destroy a society. What we need is CHANGE not destruction.
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Re: Did peaceful protests REALLY fail?
Peaceful protests rely upon the authorities actually having consciences. When they lack those, a peaceful protest is just a fancier way of committing suicide.
Gandhi himself once said that he chose nonviolence as the tactic with the best chance of success, and that if he had believed the British people lacked consciences, he'd have been shooting guns and throwing bombs instead.
Even just being armed and capable of defending your peaceful protest can work wonders - simply being armed isn't an active threat, otherwise a cop being armed would justify gunfire.
Look at the contrast between the California lockdown protest and the Michigan lockdown protest for example. Both protests organized by the same people and protesting the same thing, both engaging in civil disobedience to social distancing and mask orders, both had angry crazies who screamed in the faces of cops, both obeyed the law scrupulously aside from that civil disobedience.
But in one state, having guns was illegal so the law-abiding protest was unarmed. In the other state, guns in the capitol are completely legal so long as you don't try to conceal them. That protest also obeyed all laws except the one they were civilly disobeying. And that's where their experiences diverged.
The California protest was attacked by police, despite the fact that the attack was a federal felony (18 USC 241 & 242) for every officer involved. The cops made dozens of arrests, many of them false arrests (a second federal felony).
The Michigan protest both outnumbered and outgunned the police, who were professional, polite, and didn't commit any of those federal felonies.
Right-leaning activists have noticed something Left-leaning activists are willfully ignoring (given how guns being useful contradicts their ideological dogma) - police know full well they will never be prosecuted for committing those federal felonies, and that if sued the worst thing that happens is their union pays the settlement or judgment, the cop never paying a penny at any stage of the lawsuit.
But when the crowd can return fire if police fire indiscriminately into that crowd, police never seem to open fire at all.
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Re: Re: Did peaceful protests REALLY fail?
I agree and clearly our forefathers agreed as well. That is why we have the second amendment. Time and again, the greatest government atrocities are committed shortly after the citizens have been disarmed. That said, it illustrates the sad fact that the United States is at a point where one needs to be armed to safely protest again government policies in peace.
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The citizenry of the United States is more armed than practically any other country. The problem is that a large number of the people who have those guns would rather wait until the atrocities affect them and them alone to fight back. That’s because they’re a bunch of racist White pricks who don’t give a shit if the government ends BIPOC lives (“don’t tread on me, tread on them”), but do give a shit if the government starts fucking over White people (e.g., the stay-at-home orders). And that doesn’t even get into how many such assholes revere (or are possibly even in) the police and the military.
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Re:
You're clearly a racist prick yourself.
I'm one of those gun owners, white as well, but I'm not out there shooting police because surprise! That's murder! And a single person out shooting cops isn't going to mean shit in terms of meaningful change. You need a full-on rebellion for that.
I don't see anyone of any color gunning down police, either. So are they racist black pricks? Racist latinx pricks? We all know people of all colors own guns so what's the real deal?
Maybe you've been wrapped up in your own head for too long. You're sounding as bad as all those right wing nutjobs out there, failing to see the bigger picture and lashing out at whatever you imagine.
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That doesn’t seem to bother the right-wing anti-government types when they talk of fighting tyranny and taking down fascist politicians and such.
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Re: Re:
" You're clearly a racist prick yourself ... I'm one of those gun owners"
Racism is about gun ownership?
I realize that corporations are now people, but guns are a race?
This is getting a bit silly.
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Keep the pressure on, Tim!
As you pointed out, not many are willing to write the truth clearly and plainly, and fewer still are willing to publish it.
I, too, saw Trevor Noah's selfie video a few days ago. Very powerful stuff!
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Sliders not Toggles
I dislike how people go directly from peaceful protests to violent riots with nothing in between.
It's not a toggle. We're not required to switch between perfectly civilized and perfectly uncivilized.
I've been suggesting for years that a good middle ground, especially as a protest tactic, is to ARREST the bad cops. An arrest that is 100% legally binding according to every court from lowest to highest, city and county and state and federal, can be accomplished using words alone. Resisting arrest is just as illegal for a cop as it is for anyone else.
If you're too angry to just use words, then the thought that power-drunk corrupt cops are almost guaranteed to resist that arrest, and citizen's making an arrest are just as authorized to use force as a cop is - and in some states, citizen's actually have GREATER authority to use force against someone resisting arrest than cops do!
Any tactic that police use, that their oversight has declared to be a-okay is on the table for someone arresting a cop. Body slam as the first sign of trouble? That's just as lawful for us as for them. Choke hold in lieu of handcuffs? Just as lawful. Leading with a taser or even gunfire and informing them of the arrest after pulling the trigger? Just as lawful for us as for them.
Cops are lawfully allowed to use force to defend themselves or others because they are citizens and all citizens can lawfully do that. It's not because they are cops. Any force, even deadly force, that a cop is allowed to use is also allowed for a private citizen to use, in the same circumstances.
Acting alone would be silly, but nothing prevents a protest group from observing cops until one commits an arrestable offense and then sending in a point man or two to make the arrest, while the rest of the group lurks out of sight with rifles. When the cop violently resists, point out the riflemen and suggest they surrender. If they refuse at that point, shooting them to death is perfectly legal.
It'd only be first degree murder if they planned to shoot the cop whether he surrendered or not, after all.
Personally, I'd love to hear about a cop being killed while resisting arrest one of these days.
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On paper vs In practice
The problem with that idea is that while on paper police may have the same rights and could be arrested just like any member of the public in practice it would most certainly not go down like that both during the event after after in court.
Assuming you survived for court you wouldn't be arresting a cop you would be assaulting them(all the more so if you treated them the same way they treat people for 'resisting' arrest), and if a buddy is pointing a rifle at them while you were doing it? Yeah, odds are very good that bullets would be flying and assuming the person who attempted the arrest lived they'd be on the hook for assaulting a cop and/or attempted murder.
All animals may be equal but when it comes to court and the legal system some are most certainly more equal than others.
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Re: Sliders not Toggles
"I dislike how people go directly from peaceful protests to violent riots with nothing in between."
Are they the same people being peaceful and then rioting? Many times it is not.
Are they rioting because the police teargassed them or maybe drove vehicles over them?
The drive by shootings performed by police might also cause peaceful people to not be so inclined.
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Re: Sliders not Toggles
"It's not a toggle. We're not required to switch between perfectly civilized and perfectly uncivilized."
Eh, a riot happens because a significant amount of people have lost all hope in the trappings of civilization. As someone else noted, even Gandhi stated that he chose nonviolence because he believed it to be the best tactic against an enemy with a conscience.
Today the response of the loudest and most influential voices in government is "Call in the army" and "Gun them down in the streets".
The option of remaining a civilized man in a conflict is entirely dependent on your adversaries willingness to similarly be civilized. With Trump in office and much of congress being white old farts with ties to white supremacy that civilized approach is lacking.
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'If you're not holding up your end why should I?'
The point in the video about the social contract definitely struck me when it comes to people saying 'well they shouldn't be rioting'.
Society is an unwritten contract between large groups of people where it's collectively agreed that you will and will not act in certain ways for the betterment of the society. When you have a subsection of that group that consistently gets the short end of the stick and treated like garbage more and more the question arises, 'If they're not going to uphold their end why should we? Why should we be expected to hold up our end of the bargain when those around us refuse to do the same?'
When someone is a member of a group that can be killed on a whim and know that the one responsible has a very good chance of getting away with it unless there is a major public outcry(and even then...) it's hard to be surprised when they would get more and more frustrated and angry until it reaches the point where torching stuff seems like an acceptable response.
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First, I'd like to say that what the tyrant pig did to the black guy was completely wrong!!! Between the police unions that protect these thugs, to The Thin Blue Line Police gang which lie and cover-up for each other. Where are the good ones when they cover up and LIE to protect the bad ones? To me, that makes them just as guilty.
Also, let us not forget that far more White people are murdered by the police than Blacks!!!! Of course, that doesn't fit the narrative that these pigs only kill black people. Where are the Protests and Riots of white people killed by the police?
As of Jan 2015, the Number of people killed in police shootings.
Blacks, 1,252
Hispanics, 877
Whites, 2,385
Other 214
So whites are almost double that of Blacks!!!!
If you go by Percentages, Deaths per million, then for
Blacks 30
Hispanics 22
Whites 12
Other 4.
This does make it look worse for Blacks, which I get. Still, Almost twice as many whites were killed by the police. Did you see any protests over a single one of those let alone riots? Not a one.
I don't care what color the person is, or if they are a criminal or not. What the police did in this case like so many others was WRONG.
Destroying your community? How does that fix anything? Looting and worse to small businesses, many owned by Black people, how are you exactly helping them? Seeing what is happening to these black businesses who put all their money, time, and heart to offer a service for their community, completely destroyed by a bunch of disgusting, heartless thug looters. If anything, every one of them is just as bad as the tyrant pigs.
I did see a few good videos and pictures. Black people armed and protesting Peicfully!! Black people alone with whites and others, armed up and patrolling their own city to protect it from looters and vandals. 2 sides coming together to protect their community. The 2A in action. As far as I'm concerned, Looters and Vandals should be shot. I'm going to protect my family and property.
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Re:
"As far as I'm concerned, Looters and Vandals should be shot."
Really now. Shot you say.
What if the looters are law enforcement officers?
What if the looters are unmarked enforcers that look like teenage mutant ninja turtles?
Fire away?
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Re:
There's a simple solution to that:
When it happens, organize a protest.
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Re:
"Almost twice as many whites were killed by the police. Did you see any protests over a single one of those let alone riots?"
How many of those white people killed by the police were killed laying on the ground handcuffed? How many were given The Ride"
In order to compare things, one must first ensure they are similar, these are not. There is nothing to compare the circumstances and the reactions.
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What I see
There are many things the social contracts and the law forbid, however we the people have given police offices the authority do some of these things that are normally not allowed. The ability to use deadly force in the protection of others. In most places the best you can do is stand your own ground. Also the power of arrest. For you and I that would be kidnapping.
We gave police these powerful and awesome authorities as listed in and controlled by the law. Not a departments policy, or what a city manager feels. With an authority comes responsibility. You can't have one without the other. They have no power, the law gives them the authority, and the people make the law.
Police have the responsibility to keep us free from crime, they can not look the other way, they are duty bound to enforce the laws the same for everyone every time. That means when they see their partner stepping outside the authority he has been given, he must, he is responsible to stop whatever action the other cop is taking. In the case of George Floyd the 3 other police had the responsibility to get the guy to remove the knee from the neck. Instead you saw at least one pulling out his can of mace and getting it ready to spray the people yelling that they were killing Flyod.
Why does this happen? From what I've seen, knowing cops. They are taught you must backup your fellow offices at all times. In a way this makes sense. If an office has a person being violent, you don't have time to explain to others showing the scene just why you are trying to arrest the person for that is now fighting you. The new officers to the event have to take it on faith that they have to get into the fight and help the officer. Number one rule backup your buddies. However, they talk, they know the first officer was wrong, but they do nothing to report that crime, or even failure of dept policy. They know that of they do, they become a rat, and they will never get support when they really need it. Keep silent, go along, support your brother and sisters above all else. Problem is the that is a made up rule. Neither the people or the law that gave them the authority to start with, agree with that rule.
It's just one bad apple people say. No it is not, you fail to do something to remove or correct the bad apple, and you are just as bad. Remember as a police you have a responsibility to the law... not to your pals. Forget the apples, it is more like this. "One teaspoon of shit added to a barrel of wine, or one teaspoon of wine added to a barrel of shit both results in a barrel of shit."
If an officer can not bring himself to police the people he works with daily, then he has given up the authority to people the public at large.
How do we fix this..... that is the hard part. Those in blue that have stood by for years and let things happen, are going to have to feel some pain. Sorry. Thought love, bad tasting medicine, no pain no gain, say whatever you want. You had chances you wasted them, now it hurts.
That said some of these things might be hard to do, or in the long run can't be done, but they these on for size.
First
You are public servants, no unions, period. Don't like it, quit, drive a truck, flip burgers.
Get rid of QI, if we can't do that, then fix it. Right now a judge can say that a cop was not on notice he stepped over the line. OK, but then the judge doesn't say, but from now on are on notice for this type of things. If a judge is so lazy he doesn't want to do that second part of of QI analysis, then it automatic from then on.
Awards come out of the pension fund. Wait you say this hurts the good cops. Of course it does. They will make sure to get rid of the bad ones if means they are left broke.
Police are not the military, they serve and protect, get rid anything that remotely seems like the military.
Police can only carry weapons one grade above what a normal person can openly carry. Can't get a gun and carry in your state, sorry the cops only get an old .38 revolver. No ARs, or shotguns or swat teams. Absolutely no military weapons, no flash bangs. If I can carry a semi-auto AR down the street, then the police can have full auto rifles.
Any of the excess military gear, can't be sold to police, remove it all from them.
Get rid of no-knock warrants.
Arrest/stop happens and the police have a body cam that doesn't show the event or was not turned on, it is automatically assumed in court that the police have something to hide.
Make the DA personally responsibility if any of the police witness he uses are found to be lying. I bet he makes sure the cops are right if he has some skin in the game. Automatic Brady lists, public accessible. Add DAs to Brady lists.
Cop fakes evidence, lied to the court, hides evidence, sets someone up for a crime they didn't commit, the cop gets the sentenced to what the citizen would have gotten.
Civil asset forfeiture gone at the state and federal level. Criminal only after person is found guilty, not before.
Reverse Heien v. North Carolina
As much as I Iove all pets, get rid of drug dogs completely. We have no way to put Fido on the stand and ask what did he really smell. I bet if dogs could talk they would say, "But my best pal moved his head in just that way which means bark now and I get a treat." when asked why they alerted to a car.
FBI, this two agent shit and form 302. If they didn't record it, it didn't happen, it wasn't said.
I'm sure i can come up with more.......
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How to stop police brutality
Pay settlements from union and police retirement funds. See how fast that changes things.
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Floating ideas of how to fix this
There are a lot of good ideas about how to change police culture. None of them are going to get enacted considering the kind of people who can successfully get elected into official positions that can affect policy.
And even when sometimes someone does get into position, it's too easy for others to block their effort, leaving us back again in the status quo where police officers murder black citizens with impunity.
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Re: How to stop police brutality
Yeah, what Uriel-238 said. It is hard to fix something that is rotten through and through. At some point you must start talking about replacing that something. All of it.
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Replace it with what?
Well, one possible approach to fighting crime and injustice might be to follow Kennesaw, Georgia. However, I doubt it would yield the same results for every city.
[Link] (https://www.mic.com/articles/32277/this-georgia-town-actually-requires-all-citizens-to-own-a-gun-an d-there-have-been-interesting-results)
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An even more egregious case
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Re: An even more egregious case
That's an extremely faulty premise. George isn't the first black man to be murdered by a policeman since Trump took office. Isn't it far more logical that this is all happening due to a build-up of rage that finally boiled over? That people are fed up with police brutality?
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Re: Re: An even more egregious case
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How the fuck is Obama responsible for either of those things?
He started his campaign by referring to Mexicans as “racists and thugs”. He was one of the major supporters of the racist “birther” movement. His actions in office have leaned so hard in the direction of fascism that…well, he wants the U.S. military in U.S. cities to “dominate” protesting citizens and “keep the peace”, so you tell me if that doesn’t sound like fascism.
Which are tied into police brutality and state-sanctioned violence, yes. You see enough White cops go free after killing unarmed Black people for no good reason, you’re gonna start to think a system that has roots in slave patrols is racist.
Nobody has hijacked anything. And besides, the “tyrants in blue” are still being oppressive, but the people who would normally be all “fuck the tyrants, gimme my guns!” love it when the cops are oppressive to the right people (which, in this case, means “Black people”). Like a Twitter post I linked to earlier said: “Don’t tread on me, tread on them.”
Everything Black Americans have experienced since their arrival on this continent in 1619 has been a study in generational oppression, yes. Or did you miss the video that opened Tim’s last article on this subject?
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Obama is behind everything going on.
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Re: An even more egregious case
"The only reason this made the news is because Trump is president."
Except that's bullshit. Ferguson happened under Obama and there's plenty of reason to assume the reason many black people stopped voting democrat was because of his deafening silence on the entire mess. In fact they wouldn't stop talking about his share of the blame.
Now, if you ignore the dozens of race riots to take place in the US, each one worse than the previous one, each one sparked by an even MORE flagrant example of police brutality or outright murder you might have a case.
The only reason Trump is more in focus here is because of his public history of racism, added to his utterly tonedeaf reaction to the shooting, worthy of a Kim Jong-un, when he had the streets cleared of a public peaceful demonstration just so he could have himself a photo op, and when he went out immediately calling for the invocation of the 1807 riot act. And the actions of his yes-men when they came out calling for drone strikes and bombings.
Now, Obama in the beginning had credibility Trump doesn't have. He stood on the platform of "Change". He wasted that credibility while trying to play the political shell game rather than coming out with searing condemnation of a police department which has the back of serial killers.
"Most Police killings of innocent unarmed people are white."
Not proportionately, no. But there is a point to be made here. White "poor-looking" people are indeed treated as if they were black. But if you're black it simply doesn't matter whether you look like you just walked out of Yale.
So the police target the poor and those of perceived disadvantage as well. That just adds another order of vile to an already shitty meal. A white affluent and well-educated man can play it cool and receive respect from the police. A black affluent and well-educated man can play it cool...but will still be treated as if he was a dangerous drug-addled junkie from the wrong side of the tracks.
Yeah, the police is being racist, also classist, and those of them not actively racist or bullies cover the backs of those who are, making one bad officer turning the entire precinct into a gang of criminals.
"The actual shell game is to split team white and team black, ignoring team blue completely."
Which is why it's so very odd that white people aren't similarly outraged over the police.
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If you want blood of Cops and their familes, wish granted?
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Y’know, those could’ve been right-wing anti-government groups. Three of their ilk just got arrested in Vegas for plotting violence during the protests.
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Re: If you want blood of Cops and their familes, wish granted?
And why would that be illegal? Should police not be able to view your make/model/license plate if your car is parked in your driveway and visible from the road?
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Out here in flyover...
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Re: Out here in flyover...
tz1 swears up and down he's not a fan of Trump while frantically guzzling Trump's pussy-grabbing phallus, news at goddamn motherfucking eleven.
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Everyone else can pick the rest of your shit apart, but I’m gonna take one thing you said and rip it to shreds so thoroughly that, with any luck, you’ll never say it again:
See, you’re referring to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. I know this because I’ve ripped into people here before for bringing that case up almost exactly how you brought it up. For the sake of cancelling out that particular bullshit (and giving myself a reference comment for the future), I’mma do you an explain.
A little over a century in real-time ago — 2012, to be precise — a gay couple planned to marry in Massachusetts and celebrate upon returning to Colorado. (Colorado didn’t recognize same-sex marriages at the time. It wouldn’t do so until 2014.) The couple visited Masterpiece Cakeshop to order a cake for the celebration, only to be told by owner Jack Phillips — a devout Christian — that he wouldn’t sell them a wedding cake of any kind because of his religious beliefs. The couple left without discussing any details of the cake whatsoever. They eventually found a bakery willing to make them a cake.
The couple then filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which prohibits businesses open to the public from discriminating against customers on the basis of (among other traits) sexual orientation. The complaint turned into a lawsuit, Craig v. Masterpiece Cakeshop, which the plaintiffs won. The CCRC said Masterpiece must provide wedding cakes to future gay customers and change its policies to prevent future discrimination. Masterpiece both refused to comply with the state’s orders and stopped making wedding cakes altogether.
Masterpiece appealed the decision to Court of Appeals. That court again ruled in favor of the plaintiffs (this time joined by the CCRC); the ruling said that the act of making a wedding cake was not an expression of free speech nor free exercise of religion, but part of the expected conduct of Phillips' business. The court cited a different case involving three other bakeries refusing to bake a cake with homophobic messaging featuring Bible verses: Those bakeries had made other cakes for Christian customers and declined that order based on the offensive message rather than the customers' creed. Masterpiece Cakeshop's refusal, on the other hand, happened “because of its opposition to same sex marriage which...is tantamount to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation”.
Masterpiece appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which became Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The question before that court asked if “applying Colorado's public accommodations law to compel Phillips to create expression that violates his sincerely held religious beliefs about marriage violates the Free Speech or Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment”. In its decision, the court punted on the issue of whether the non-discrimination ordinance violated the First Amendment. Instead, it reversed the CCRC’s decision on the grounds that the CCRC showed hostility towards Phillips because his religious beliefs, which violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of neutrality towards religious matters from the government. The concurring opinions noted specifically how the CCRC had handled Phillips’s case — including how the CCRC compared Phillips’s religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust — as compared to cases where it granted exemptions. (Justice Kennedy, I should note, implied that he would’ve ruled in favor of the CCRC had it remained neutral.) But the ruling itself focused only on the hostility from the CCRC; it didn’t invalidate any non-discrimination laws, including Colorado’s, which meant such protections for LGBT people remained in place.
Phillips eventually found himself in front of the Colorado Division of Civil Rights in 2018 when, a year prior, he refused to bake a cake for a transgender customer celebrating their transition. The CDCR ruled against Phillips, who immediately filed a lawsuit against the state; according to the suit, he wants a permanent injunction to prevent the state from enforcing its anti-discrimination laws against him as well as punitive damages. That suit (and the countersuit by the state) was eventually dropped, though the transgender customer remains in civil litigation with Masterpiece.
Okay, now you have the recap of what happened. So what does all this teach us? Put simply: Religious beliefs aren’t a “get out of jail free” card in regars to non-discrimination ordinances. Justice Kennedy wrote that religious beliefs such as objections to homosexuality “do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law”. In other words: If you sell generic cakes to the general public, and your state says “sell them to gay people or you’re fucked”…well, you either sell the cakes to gay people or you’re fucked.
A multicultural, pluralistic society requires compromise to accommodate the contrasting values of others. In the world of the marketplace, of commerce and public accommodation, people must channel their conduct, not their beliefs, to leave space for other citizens who believe something different. A White Christian with a public-facing business can believe God thinks Black people are subhuman filth, but they can’t outright refuse to serve a Black person who walks through the door because they’re Black. That compromise — that tolerance for those who believe differently — is the glue that holds together our society. It is the price of our citizenship.
In your private life, you can associate with anybody you like and avoid anybody you don’t like. The same applies to private clubs and businesses that only serve a personally approved clientele. The government can’t do shit about any of that. But when you open a business that offers goods or services for sale to the public, you don’t get to define who makes up “the public”. You can offer a full “menu” to everyone but gay people and and a partial “menu” to gay people, but you shouldn’t expect the state to look kindly upon that discrimination.
And that’s because you can’t logically attack anti-discrimination laws when they apply to gays and lesbians without attacking them when they apply to, for instance, African-Americans. If people want to argue that the freedoms of speech, association, or religion means a business can refuse its services to gays and lesbians, they must also make the argument that those same rights protect a refusal to do business with Christians, people of color, or any other group deemed a “protected class”.
A broader point also applies vis-á-vis the claims of “religious oppression” when a Christian with a public-facing business is asked to treat gay people equally under the law. Such claims rest on the idea that anti-gay Christians are oppressed because people might find their beliefs offensive and label them bigots and refuse to patronize their businesses. We can thus draw a logical conclusion: Christians believe they are oppressed unless they can express their moral condemnation of others without being subject to moral condemnation themselves.
And I’ll top this off with two last notes, which touch on your original point and tie into the ones I’ve made:
At no point in the original Masterpiece case was the business asked to bake a cake for the gay couple. While the bakery was asked to comply with Colorado law and offer wedding cakes (assumedly undecorated) to gay couples, the couple at the center of the case didn’t ask for Masterpiece to bake them a cake.
Now I don’t wanna catch you breaking out that bullshit again, y’hear? Because if you do, I’mma link back to this comment and ask you to read the entire goddamn thing over again, and I doubt you’ll want to do that.
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Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission
The job of the US Supreme Court was not to punish the CCRC by making a ruling unfavorable to it, but to sort out whether or not Masterpiece Cakes was obligated by Colorado's public accommodations laws, and it totally failed to do that.
But then the Federalist Society control of SCOTUS is one of the reasons I think the entire justice system needs to be abolished from the bottom to the top. The Federalist Five are entirely willing to obey their shadowy masters whenever they are signaled to do so.
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The Sons of Martha
The actions of the police and the calls for violence against them are both symptoms of the problem, not causes or solutions. Kipling said it best over a century ago in his poem, The Sons of Martha:
They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to leave their job when they damn-well choose.
We are fundamentally lazy. We keep hoping that we can launch fire-and-forget systems that will maintain themselves without further effort on our part. That can never work. If we want a responsive and user-friendly police force, we must maintain oversight over the police. If we want bridges not to fall, we must repair them. If we do not want to drive over potholes, we must fill them. If we want to keep the ability to abort a fetus, we cannot rely on Roe v Wade to do the job for us forever. If we want good things, we must find ways to pay the people who provide them.
And paroxysms of violence against the system will help no more than allowing it to run itself without guidance. When all the stores are looted and all the police cars are burned, nothing will have changed aside from immiserating everyone who did not have the means to leave, if people do not pick up the reins of government and never put them down.
I saw the same thing twenty years ago when I was working on Y2K fixes. People with vague apocalyptic hopes that everything would come crashing down and then somehow a utopia would magically rise from the ashes. It's a stupidity so monumental that it could only be believed by humans. How anyone can look anywhere in the world, where revolutions and insurrections have led to nothing but disaster, and think that we should have that here, is unfathomable, except that we are the same people of whom half elected a moronic piece of filth to be our president, so perhaps it's no wonder that the other half of us would choose an equally stupid and evil way forward.
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Re: The Sons of Martha
"We are fundamentally lazy."
More gaslighting I see.
We are fundamentally slaves with little recourse.
ftfy
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Re: Re: The Sons of Martha
Thank you for demonstrating my point. Declaring yourself as a slave with little recourse is a great way to indulge the fundamental desire to be lazy without feeling any guilt about it. You will be a slave without recourse after the police cars burn, even more than you are now.
Stacy Abrams has an op-ed in the NY Times today about how necessary it is to vote, even when voting feels like an inadequate and useless response that will change nothing.
A nation of three hundred million people isn't going to turn to follow your will because you proclaim yourself as the fount of wisdom for how our lives should be lived. If you want things to change, you must work to convince enough others that your way is correct, so that they collectively choose to make those changes. It will not be quick, and you are likely to fail if your proposals are too radical. That's how it goes. And if you succumb to the temptation to use violence to get your way quickly, expect that violence will be used against you to keep you from succeeding. (And violence may be used against you regardless, because, unfortunately, that is also how it goes.)
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Re: Re: Re: The Sons of Martha
"Declaring yourself as a slave with little recourse is a great way to indulge the fundamental desire to be lazy without feeling any guilt about it. You will be a slave without recourse "
Yes, voting is important - if you are allowed to. Many eligible citizens wish to vote but are not allowed, but they are just too lazy aren't they. What a horrible attitude.
Wow - a fountain of wisdom - wtf? Quite delusional you are.
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Re: The Sons of Martha
Batman and Superman?
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Counter-Insurrection
The proposal to REAP seems to assume that the proposer's feelings are shared by everyone. That's manifestly not the case. If I thought someone burning a police car had a chance of pulling off an insurrection successfully, and I had the means, I would have no compunctions about shooting them, because I do not want to live in the society that this person wants to bring about. I doubt I'm alone. The police car burners and looters aren't going to get their revolution for free. They will get a civil war, just like the neo-Nazis want. And then they will lose, because we will get our own version of Duterte, Bolsonaro, Orbán, Modi, ... who will promise security and be welcomed for it.
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Re: Counter-Insurrection
You are part of the problem, and part of the cause of the riots.
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Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
I am part of the problem because, aside from voting, I don't do anything to help improve civil society. I, too, am fundamentally lazy.
I am not the cause of the riots. I am the excuse for the riots.
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Re: Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
wtf are you saying
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
LIberals (all people, really) pick a side and then pretend that no one on their side is evil. But the rampaging looting mob is evil. They are evil even if their behavior is rooted in systemic racism, in histories of oppression, in poverty, in slavery, in the behavior of the police. Liberals refuse to see that regardless of what caused someone on their side to be evil, once they are evil, they must be dealt with, to remove the evil from society so that the people who are not evil need not live in fear.
Evil people look for opportunity to be evil, and if they can cloak themselves in righteousness and social justice in order to help themselves do evil, they will do that, because they're evil. If liberals are going to be willfully blind to this, they will be reminded at the ballot box, and that would be a misfortune.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
Evil people look for opportunity to be evil, and if they can cloak themselves in righteousness and social justice in order to help themselves do evil, they will do that, because they're evil.
Like teargassing peaceful protesters so you can stand in front of a church holding up a bible like it means something to you? That kind of cloaking?
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Evil
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to present evil as an objective notion, a tag with which we designate hostiles and acceptable targets like Judenstern or Fair Game. Then we can process them into mass graves or torture them to death or burn them by the village with hellfire missiles, and since they're designated evil we can discharge our strength without concern for proportionality. Because fuck those guys.
It's this kind of notion of evil that drives the police to believe assaulting journalists and media personnel is acceptable, or for that matter, drive the United States to torture the enemy, and drive devout allegedly-moral religious patriots to build a detention and interrogation program by which the US subjects captives to torture without even a lick of due process, and for no good, positive result. Or even massacre villages with fire because some person of interest was there once according to old intelligence...or send in the military to mop up rioters because they're lowlifes and losers.
No, The Devil is a personal element, an internal part of us. It kicks in with fight-or-flight when our future is uncertain and we fear for our well being. Like Faust negotiating with Mephistopheles we are sometimes confronted with moments where reasonable solutions seem ineffective, but an antisocial option or an unethical option would conveniently solve problems.
Few of us have to consider murdering our lover's partner or killing a patron to speed our inheritance, but plenty of us have to choose to do our employer's dirty work in order to keep our jobs, whether it's screwing a colleague out of benefits or silencing the victim of a sexual assault or even indulging in dishonesty in a marketing campaign. Look! You're having tea with the Devil right now!
So it is with all those law enforcement officers who look the other way as their partner plants a gun on the kid he just shot, or turn off their bodycams because things might get too exciting. Or hose down cameramen with pepper spray to reduce the number of witnesses.
We all negotiate with the devil. Commonly. And we all decide when we're going to take His option to survive and when we can afford to keep our integrity. But that makes us, my some definitions, all evil, driven to desperate deeds like a Hitchcock protagonist.
Or maybe only those of us who get caught and painted by the authorities as a subversive to be managed. So long all evidence your own misdeeds are sequestered away, no one will ever know.
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Re: Counter-Insurrection
They will get a civil war, just like the neo-Nazis want. And then they will lose, because we will get our own version of Duterte, Bolsonaro, Orbán, Modi, ... who will promise security and be welcomed for it.
Yeah, I've got a few of those the "civil war" nutjobs on my Facebook feed. They're typically semi-geriatric, obese/diabetic, and technologically ignorant rubes longing for the day when they could've done something, but are no longer able to, apart from talk about it with the rest of the white trash over some Old Milwaukee pounders.
I wouldn't be too worried about them. Hell, they can't even maintain their trailers, much less organize into a functional group.
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Re: Counter-Insurrection
"I would have no compunctions about shooting them,"
wtf
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Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
Interesting and thoughtful.
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Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
People participating in violent insurrection are soldiers in a war. Soldiers in wars get killed by by people who oppose what they're doing. That tf.
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Re: Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
You're full of shit
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
LIkely true. You should get enough other people to believe that so that my policies lose at the ballot box. Go for it!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Counter-Insurrection
"You should get enough other people to believe that so that my policies lose at the ballot box. Go for it!"
So with the massive permanent disenfranchisement of black people all we really need to do is get enough upstanding white citizens at the ballots to win this shit? Nicely done.
The problem here lies in your argument where you define "evil" as as a tangential quality which turns a human being into a target? How does this summary judgment pan out for 800,000 police officers who may not have committed crimes but are almost all guilty of knowing but standing aside?
Last I checked the law assumes mitigating circumstances exist. Your arguments allow none. And thus you leave very few "good" people to remain unharmed.
Riots were what made the nation you live in and are nothing more than the natural result of a large part of society having failed to uphold the social contract. No doubt the british landowners and merchants were similarly outraged over being bankrupted by their precious cargo of tea ending up in the Boston harbor. Do you similarly call for the execution of those rioting traitors called the "Founding Fathers" by the recipients of these fruits of evil every 4th of July?
Or is it just when you yourself are the british landowner hearing of colonials rampaging in the streets that you are outraged, upset, and all too willing to use the word "evil" to justify some murder to preserve the status quo of which you are a beneficiary? Because at the root of that argument all I'm hearing is "Fuck you, Got mine!".
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Peace... as in, peace and quiet... as in, quiet as the grave... as in, your grave.
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Those heroic stories about protesters saving the day are lies.
Protests rarely work. Violence betters the odds a little bit.
Real change comes from people in power changing their minds.
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Re:
What stories about protestors saving the day?
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Re: Re:
Here: Martin Luther King, Ghandi...
They did a lot of good work, but in the end, they are a figure head of a wider movement. That movement got successful because it "infected" the people in power.
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Qualified Immunity and lack of duty to protect
...two things that would be easy to fix by statute. The first simply requires Congress to modify 42 U.S.C § 1983 in such a way that the negligent violation of Constitutional rights by police officers and other agents of the government is plainly included in what is forbidden, thereby vitiating the basis for the Supreme Court's construction of "qualified immunity".
The second can (and should) be fixed by statutes at the state level (or even ordinances at the local level) creating an affirmative duty to protect the lives and property of innocent civilians on the part of police.
Surely we can get a one-time alliance of convenience between progressives who would want such changes in the interests of racial minorities and the libertarian-leaning and Constitutional Conservative factions of the right to get the second sort of measure through at least one state legislature. Getting the first though Congress and signed into law is more dubious, but someone in Congress from one or both sides of my proposed alliance of convenience should surely be trying!
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Re: Qualified Immunity and lack of duty to protect
".two things that would be easy to fix by statute"
Nothing is easily fixed by putting words on paper.
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Re: Qualified Immunity and lack of duty to protect
Good points but not enough. What is desperately required is to somehow introduce the understanding that if you are a cop and observe another cop breaking the law or acting like a bully, not speaking up makes you an accomplice. The cop culture of the Blue Code needs to go away...even if you have to fire and retrain every police in the US. Without the removal of that the police remain just another gang.
Because on their own the two amendments you suggest only incentivize corrupted officers to make sure that there are no witnesses to their crimes.
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Do you really not care what is getting destroyed?
RE: "Whatever burns, burns."
Rioting and looting shows little respect for what was working within a community. They are acts of lawlessness. I find it really hard to accept that all of the businesses that were destroyed existed purely to exploit the local communities. Businesses can succeed only because they provide desired goods or services to the people around them. As one woman pointed out in a film interview, the Target, Dollar Tree, drug store, and local convenience stores near her were all now gone. Where was she going to get the items she needs? If you burn down a public housing or government building, where are those people to go? Is it fair to the other members of the community to force them to travel larger distances to get the things they need?
I understand that people are angry. They have every reason to be. But the focus should be on changing the components that are not working, not on destroying the whole machine. Look at what happened in Syria. People were unhappy. They protested. The government clamped down against the protests. Some people turned to violence. Initially, it was condoned and supported by people like you. However, violence too often just begets more violence. As more innocents got caught up in the conflict, they were forced to pick sides. Do you really want the US to become a war torn nation?
I am seeing a great deal of support coming from non-black citizens against the police action in the Floyd case. We need to channel that energy towards making the changes that are needed with the lawful tools we have at hand. Saying you don't don't care about what gets destroyed shows a lack of gratitude for the many benefits one has by living in this country. I recommend that you stop taking those benefits for granted. That is why I will personally put my efforts into using lawful ways to to change a system that clearly needs fixing.
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Re: Do you really not care what is getting destroyed?
"Rioting and looting shows little respect for what was working within a community"
1) People peacefully protest
2) Law enforcement shows up in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle outfits and attacks the peaceful protestors
3) Protestors return the favor
4) film at eleven
When people protest police brutality, what is the best course of action for the police to take? Well, obviously it is best to show up in full riot gear and start shooting with out warning - right?
"Saying you don't don't care about what gets destroyed shows a lack of gratitude for the many benefits one has by living in this country"
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acts of lawlessness
When the law enforcement within a community is _murdering people without due process or justice, then the contracts that hold the community together have been broken. Rule defaults to the power of force.
And that's where riots become problematic, because what's the police going to do? Kill more people and break the society down further?
The current situation does not exist in a vacuum. The police have only gotten worse since the last time(s) we've confronted this reality. Only its been more revealed since there are more private cameras and there are body-cams for the police to turn off before they beat someone. (And they turn them off every. fucking. time.)
So we really don't have a society. Businesses big and small (which depend on the social contract to exist) have only continued to lobby for tough on crime (e.g. tough on poor innocent people) regulation and not watchdog regulation. So in fact, they have been exploiting the poor, by counting on law and order even when the downtrodden are treated by law enforcement according to a lesser standard.
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Re: Do you really not care what is getting destroyed?
"Rioting and looting shows little respect for what was working within a community. They are acts of lawlessness. I find it really hard to accept that all of the businesses that were destroyed existed purely to exploit the local communities."
I'm sure there were hundreds of british landowners and merchants in despair over the rioting colonials who so callously bankrupted them and disrupted the vital services the community needed to live. In fact, rather ironically - and the more tragic for it - almost everyone calling for the restoration of law and order and condemning the riots sounds as if they're channeling an 18th-century outraged british statesman damning the american colonists to hell and back.
"I understand that people are angry. They have every reason to be. But the focus should be on changing the components that are not working, not on destroying the whole machine. "
They've tried that. Again, again, and again. When they managed to get to the point where they didn't risk getting lynched for setting foot in a ballot booth they found themselves instead disenfranchised én másse. One peaceful protest after another, met with unrelenting force. Their greatest unifier, MLK, marched in peace and woke the whole nation. For his trouble he took a bullet to the face and the changes he campaigned for only happened when the riots after his death threatened to set fire to what the people in power considered important.
The black people of the US have been taught the lesson, over centuries, that as long as they keep asking peacefully no one will listen and nothing will change.
How many more centuries would you like these former slaves to ask nicely before the powers-that-be finally see fit to grant them the rights they've been guaranteed since the end of the civil war?
Not going to put you on the spot here. Any suggestion will do. 1? 2? 5?
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Re: Do you really not care what is getting destroyed?
"Saying you don't don't care about what gets destroyed shows a lack of gratitude for the many benefits one has by living in this country."
Which, if you are black, means teaching how not to get murdered by the police to your children, in the hopes that will help.
...being treated like a second-class citizen when dealing with banks, brokers, etc.
...being treated like a dangerous, escaped fugitive by police and law enforcement.
...getting punished with a dozen years in jail and permanent disenfranchisement for a misdemeanor when they were in their teens while a white policeman, on camera, who just brutally, slowly and deliberately executed a handcuffed, helpless, non-resisting black man needs to wait for a few days before a DA unwillingly starts off by squeezing out the lightest possible charge he can possibly levy while the state coroner does somersaults around trying to exculpate the officer (which the privately performed autopsy blatantly contradicted).
For what should the black man be grateful in the US? Not being born in a war zone? Not true for many unfortunate blacks, especially in Chicago, Minneapolis and NYC. Not being born in a third world hellhole where you can't drink the water? Not true if you live in Flint - or any other of the 3000 ghettos with similar infrastructure.
You know what black europeans say, looking at the shit happening over on your side of the pond? "Thank God I wasn't born in the US".
What is truly bizarre to me is why black people are even still trying. If someone told me my future was to fear for my life everytime i stepped into the street due to the police and to be treated like an undesirable over the color of my skin, then that's a country I'd rather leave.
Of course, even THAT presents a pretty big issue for the black american. Where would he go? And who'd pay his way?
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Moving the dial
I read the whole thing and did find any demonstration of this premise. Did I miss it? Honest question!
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Never more applicable than now...
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."[John F. Kennedy March 1962]
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."[George Santayana, 1905]
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Re: Never more applicable than now...
The worst bit is that whose who can remember the past are condemned to watch the fools around them repeat it, and drag the rememberers along.
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Violent protests are only going to get people hurt or killed because they have way more guns and will shoot you right out of the Seattle.
You never battle them in the field....
Here's how you fix the system.
Turn your TV to off.
Don't let them brainwash you into racism. And hating your fellow brother just because his skin color is blue and yours is green. Or whatever color it is. That is there goal is to turn the people against each other.
WHY!!!
BECAUSE UNITED WE WIN. (STAND) and they loose.
They (the mainstream media)are the instigators of the hate that you have been brainwashed into believing you should hate your fellow brother and why one race should hate the other there is no other race. Only one
THE HUMAN RACE.
Stop voting.!!!
They make it CLEAR To everyone that there opposing party are peices of shit and there apposing party Dem or Rep sling mud and tell us what a shifty job the other party is doing and what prices of shit they are.
Hmm, let me see, whats that telling me,,,,..are we so dumbed down and ignorantly ignorant to see there both prices of shit. Wait no that can't be.
OK, so number 3 on the list would be you need to wake the fuck up or am I the only one who seems.
So. Instead of bearying your face in your device in virtual fake land non reality manipulation. Or just complaining but then do nothing with your excuses of your to burst in life working g and fucking around d with your new car or toys.
Hears some things that will change shit around hear!
And as much as I hate to be told that I have a duty to do anything!!!
As an American you are the "Owner"of this land and protector. That is actually your DUTY THAT GOES FOR ALL OF US. THIS IS HOW YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Terminate and cash out all "Your INSURANCE - Accounts" they basically deceaved you out of: social security INSURANCE Account / Drivers License INSURANCE account / certificate of live birth INSURANCE Account./ your Baptismal INSURANCE Account. / If you served in the military you have an extra INSURANCE ACCOUNT Dd-214 INSURANCE ACCOUNT.
YES INSURANCE ACCOUNTS.
I life everything must return to it sorce- like you came from the earth the minerals ,the dirt ect. And you will return to the source. And go back into the earth.
YOUR THE SORCE OF ALL THOSE ACCOUNTS AND WHEN YOU SHUT THEM DOWN AND TERMINATE THEM.
They have to liquidate and rap those accounts up.
However they have to and the residue cash left over has to go back to the source....YOU!!!!
We are the the initial depositors- you fore father who worked his ass off for you to have a good life is the money that is now yours is in your account at the U.S.TREASURY.
AND YOUR THE INITIAL DEPOSITOR/OWNER OF IT.
I'm going to stop there because there's something you forefathers did and they were very smart and wise.
They knew that our government were going to be greedy tyrannical assholes and they knew what they would pull on the people and nailed them on every turn of tyrany they would pull and cover it.
But... they also knew they would have lazy ass peices of shit kids who think they can get everything handed to them and not have to do shit to get it. And they covered them with the statement
IGNORANC OF THE LAW IS KNOW EXCUSE.
Yes. It applies to both us and the government but the government it kind of a given that they know the law.
So in my opinion only I think they were directing that statement towards there Children.
And diligence will be rewarded .
And I'm saying that to you now. On there behalf.
But I could be rong .
You do the work from hear forward
I love you all.
Peace
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