06-08-2020, 09:32 AM
(06-08-2020, 09:17 AM)David Horn Wrote:(06-07-2020, 01:38 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(06-07-2020, 07:33 AM)David Horn Wrote:(06-06-2020, 04:48 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(06-03-2020, 07:40 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Again, this time in Florida, a police officer shoved a peaceful minority protestor and turned a peaceful crowd into a confrontation. He has been removed from any contact with the public, and the attorney general has opened an investigation.
That has got to become the expected norm. If the police are the ones to instigate the violence, the system has got to respond to end it.
Exactly so.
Here, we all agree.
Not clear. Some of our posters are coming in on the side of the racist, violent cops. Oh, they don't quite present it that way. They tiptoe around it. They are pro Trump and against the looters rather that explicitly advocating racist and violent police behavior, the behavior many are protesting against. Still.
Many cities are limiting curfews and banning chokeholds for cops. It is getting to the point of deciding exactly what has to be done to end the problematic behavior. Any other nominations?
By 'we', I meant we three, but your point is important. It's hard to know just how far Trump has to go to alienate his most loyal followers. Supporting police violence seems to be popular among a small but highly ideological minority -- all Trump fans to the death.
Unless someone is talking about me -- I am for law and order as a necessary (but far from sufficient) condition for allowing people to have civil liberties. Lawlessness is not liberty, but such is so whatever side one is of the badge, whether a looter or a brutal cop. We need to drum out the bad cops and retrain the rest so that they are less likely to confront when no confrontation is necessary.
Peaceful demonstrations are necessary for calling elected officials to account when there is no immediate election or when power is entrenched locally in one party or clique. Looting, property destruction, and assaults are not part of a peaceful demonstration... and people who do those things have no reliable friends among peaceful demonstrators. The same camcorder that someone brings to record any incident of police brutality can be turned just as easily on someone smashing a store window to grab something in a display case.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.