The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(07-11-2020, 02:39 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(07-11-2020, 02:05 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: The protesters were the ones walking around carrying all the  signs and repeating slogans  while  the looters and rioters were out and about  doing their thing. Personally, I wouldn't  waste my time or money fixing other peoples  junk. You're  going to find out soon enough that America isn't interested in fixing liberal junk or fixing  the issues directly related to the Democratic parties past and present either.

Impressive.  You have finally learned to tell the difference between protestors and looters.  I didn't know if you had it in you to notice.

Crises, well, are what happens are when a whole bunch of Americans decide on 'fixing other peoples junk.'  You strive to get rid of kings, slave owners, isolationists, laissez faire businessmen, violent racist police, or people who murder randomly for their own convenience.  These are truly despicable people.  Deplorables, though I wouldn't call them that if you are running for office and depending on their votes.  Conservatives?  The major problems of the culture are confronted.  (Well, some of them.  If you select a too wishy washy crisis leader, some issues get pushed off until the next transformational turning.  Too soon to tell if this has happened.)

We had a saying back in the awakening.  "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."  If you have no inclination to help fix the problems, hopefully you will get out of the way.

With camcorders and cell-phone video everywhere,. and protesters having brought such devices along to document their participation in something wonderful, the same recording devices that can document police brutality can also record arson, vandalism, assaults and battery, and looting. Many protesters have no problem with the usual sort of police work that busts drunk drivers, spouse-abusers, drug-dealers, rapists, armed robbers, and child molesters. The Black Lives Matters protests are well organized and orderly. Rioters are easy to spot and identify this time. This isn't Detroit in 1967; the technology of recording video no longer needs the unwieldy, expensive television camera. We can all carry a cell phone. 

Here's a hint: the news media have usually worked hand-in-glove with police in supplying video of criminal behavior. News media rely heavily upon official sources for stories -- especially criminal trials -- and they return the favor. 

Protesters may see some destructive people torching a car for no apparent reason and think "That could be MY car -- and Fluffy (my beloved pet dog) is in my car". The protests against police brutality aren't about people busted for overt criminality. If the police do their job, then such offenders get hauled off to jail, basically intact. The protests are about police brutality which violates the expectation that the accused will be taken, unhurt, to the pokey. I would take video of violent or destructive acts and forward those to the police.  

I am for law and order, something necessary for the enjoyment of basic human rights. The alternative to law and order is lynch law which may be efficient in dispatching real or imagined offenders -- but infamously poor in making judgments. Police brutality in no way serves law and order. Of course we need to humanize police forces and reform them -- starting by more effective weeding out of bad cops who join police forces for all the wrong reasons. Want to do some real good for Humanity? Be a cop. You may end up busting drug traffickers, spouse-abusers, drunk drivers, armed robbers, rapists, and child-molesters... but you will be trained to do it. Your presence on the highway, real or imputed, is a good deterrent to driving at unsafe speeds. You may be pulling someone out of a wrecked car as it starts to burn or before it burns. Your presence may be what it takes to stop a family argument.

We all have our little list. Mine is rather conventional.