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Post by GiftOfFlavor on Jan 10, 2021 23:02:44 GMT -5
Violence to further civil rights, while still wrong, is very different than violence to overthrow a democratic election, for which there has been zero evidence--despite a desperate search for it--of any large scale wrong doing. Violence for civil rights is not the same as violence to overthrow democracy. Oh I don’t think it’s the same. But I definitely think it’s wrong. All of it. From both sides. |
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Post by GiftOfFlavor on Jan 11, 2021 0:11:05 GMT -5
It’s only a coup if it’s from the coup détat region in France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling white terrorism.
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Post by maurinsky on Jan 11, 2021 9:20:52 GMT -5
One thing that the insurrectionists didn't encounter was police and bad actors (white supremacists) escalating or triggering the violence, which happened at many of the BLM protests.
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Post by villanelle on Jan 11, 2021 13:03:16 GMT -5
Violence to further civil rights, while still wrong, is very different than violence to overthrow a democratic election, for which there has been zero evidence--despite a desperate search for it--of any large scale wrong doing. Violence for civil rights is not the same as violence to overthrow democracy. Oh I don’t think it’s the same. But I definitely think it’s wrong. All of it. From both sides. Sure. I also think that lying to your mom about not having broken the vase is wrong. I think that eating grapes in the produce section is wrong. I think that illegal parking is wrong. I think that cutting in line is wrong. But I don't bring those things up in a conversation about bludgeoning a man to death with a fire extinguisher when he's trying to do his job preventing out riot, among other things, because they have no place in that conversation because of the scale of the wrongness, among other reasons. I don't bring them up in a conversation about an attack on the heart of our government, an attempted coup, and an effort to overthrow the voice of democracy. If I did--if someone said "people are trying to overthrow the government and they murdered people and it's wrong" and I said, "yes, and refilling your drink when you didn't pay for the refill option is wrong, too", it would look like I was making a comparison, and that comparison would be foolish to the point of being insulting and disrespectful to the victims of what happened. Which in this case include the entire American public. |
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Post by deeniereenie on Jan 11, 2021 17:16:23 GMT -5
YES.
I thought of this analogy last night- stealing is wrong. But there is a huge difference between a person stealing a loaf of bread so they can feed their family, and someone breaking into a home where people are inside.
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Post by Tpatt100 on Jan 13, 2021 15:44:52 GMT -5
I am tired of the Republicans speaking about lack of outrage last summer... the protests and riots dominated the news cycle for weeks if not months. The BLM protests alone were not encouraged by the sitting President but was condemned when the riots broke out.
This time the President repeatedly and actively encouraged protests, encouraged protests at the Capitol, repeatedly told lies to get people nice and riled up well before the protests at the Capitol.
Then when the Capitol riots broke out he was too busy making calls about encouraging Republicans to drag the vote out and had to be forced to make a statement discouraging the rioting....
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Post by Mamapalooza on Jan 14, 2021 1:48:23 GMT -5
It was an example that violence from any side of the political spectrum is in my opinion generally unproductive and may actually damage the cause. I didn’t equate it with storming the capitol. 🤷♀️  Funny, not funny, how people on the right are basically saying the same thing in reverse. Same with the private company argument. I'm not sure when the left started cheering for corporations to do whatever they want (and does that apply to Exxon and Monsanto?) or when the right started demanding corporations' need to participate in morally objectionable behavior (bakeries notwithstanding, apparently). Everybody thinks everyone else is stupid, and drunk with power, and ready to ship them off to the gulags. I converse with you guys who are more liberal than me, and with others who are more conservative than me, and I tell ya, I'm getting whiplash from all the same arguments coming from both sides. Everybody should just hold up giant mirrors and see how ridiculous it looks arguing about the same shit on both sides. But the media isn't about to let that happen any time soon, holy shit. And now comes the clampdown on social media, without even a pretense of any impartial consistency. Here the president of the US is banned from Twitter, but the President of China is still there, its treatment of Tibet and Hong Kong and its own citizens be damned. The Ayatollah is still on social media, the guy in whose nation women are jailed for removing their headscarves and gays are just non-existent, or worse. Antifa in Portland is still on facebook, and those guys were still rioting just two weeks ago. But Parler gets the boot because, reasons. Never mind the individuals who never used it to utter a single nasty word at anyone, the whole damn platform went dark. Never mind that the protestors at the Capitol used Twitter and facebook to organize. Those platforms get to stay. People send death threats via gmail, but it's doing fine. Death to America videos on youtube? Not a problem. But Trump is the guy everyone loves to hate so he has to go, and tens of thousands of "problematic" people with him. Politicians openly talk about making lists straight out of some McCarthy nightmare, and Pelosi inadvertently (probably) asked the Pentagon to implement a military coup to ward off the other guy's own coup, and was politely declined. Nary a blip made over that one, which is funny weird on a few levels. People are leaving big tech, hoping to decentralize some of the power away from these loons running the show. Which is cool. But *stomps foot* I don't WANT to give up my iPhone and Chrome browser and Amazon. I just want people to dial it down and act like fucking adults again. Someone just posted the video of Trump's speech from the WH. It was as sober a speech as he could make. So guaranteed, the media is going to spin it all week to throw fuel on the fire ahead of the inauguration. And it will work because people don't bother reading past headlines and memes much anymore. The media is shit, is what I'm saying. And anyone who still thinks this clampdown on political dissent - swift, coordinated and prepared for - is actually about Trump, needs to open their eyes. Or don't, and keep calling everyone on the other side white supremacists and Nazis and see where that goes in 2 or 4 years. The extremists at either end want to A) tear everything down and start a revolution or B) revert back to the dark ages. It's the reasonable majority in the middle who has to pick a side with one of the these two crazy camps, and they up getting conflated with the extremists, and no one can even see down the middle anymore. Conservatives are not white supremacists. And the liberal left are not anarchists and Antifa. Maybe fuck THAT narrative. What might have happened if a group of heavily armed black men had staged a protest on the steps of what appears to be a government building? The Capitol police were taking a knee in front of a BLM protest at one point last summer. But that was some time after protestors tried to burn down the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct with people inside, and the cops abandoned it. So we've come far apparently, and now police shooting a protestor - a woman protestor at that - just doesn't generate the same outrage it did a few months ago. In fact, I haven't really heard any criticism of him at all. Can't say if that would hold true had the female protestor not been white however, but that's probably irrelevant anyway. Though she's not a black man, I do know that when Susan Rosenberg was convicted for her involvement with the Weather Underground's bombing of government buildings, her sentence was eventually commuted by Clinton when her sentence was deemed excessive for what she'd actually done. She recovered well though, stayed politically active, even got a book published. She now sits on the board for Thousand Currents, which sponsors funding and administration for BLM. So don't be afraid that being branded a domestic terrorist is necessarily a dead-end. People are quite forgiving it turns out. I do know that when the Black Panthers breached the California Capitol in 1967, they were detained and questioned, then released and had their guns returned. But they succeeded in changing the gun laws (for better or worse). Reagan was Governor then, if I have the timing right. Check out this newspaper account from the time, and look at the remarkable difference in tone compared to the outrage editorializing that passes for news today. Can you imagine if this event was written about now? This is what journalism needs to look like again - when people were still intruders, and not Nazis. |
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Post by Miss Prudey on Jan 14, 2021 2:09:39 GMT -5
Funny, not funny, how people on the right are basically saying the same thing in reverse. Same with the private company argument. I'm not sure when the left started cheering for corporations to do whatever they want (and does that apply to Exxon and Monsanto?) or when the right started demanding corporations' need to participate in morally objectionable behavior (bakeries notwithstanding, apparently). Everybody thinks everyone else is stupid, and drunk with power, and ready to ship them off to the gulags. I converse with you guys who are more liberal than me, and with others who are more conservative than me, and I tell ya, I'm getting whiplash from all the same arguments coming from both sides. Everybody should just hold up giant mirrors and see how ridiculous it looks arguing about the same shit on both sides. But the media isn't about to let that happen any time soon, holy shit. And now comes the clampdown on social media, without even a pretense of any impartial consistency. Here the president of the US is banned from Twitter, but the President of China is still there, its treatment of Tibet and Hong Kong and its own citizens be damned. The Ayatollah is still on social media, the guy in whose nation women are jailed for removing their headscarves and gays are just non-existent, or worse. Antifa in Portland is still on facebook, and those guys were still rioting just two weeks ago. But Parler gets the boot because, reasons. Never mind the individuals who never used it to utter a single nasty word at anyone, the whole damn platform went dark. Never mind that the protestors at the Capitol used Twitter and facebook to organize. Those platforms get to stay. People send death threats via gmail, but it's doing fine. Death to America videos on youtube? Not a problem. But Trump is the guy everyone loves to hate so he has to go, and tens of thousands of "problematic" people with him. Politicians openly talk about making lists straight out of some McCarthy nightmare, and Pelosi inadvertently (probably) asked the Pentagon to implement a military coup to ward off the other guy's own coup, and was politely declined. Nary a blip made over that one, which is funny weird on a few levels. People are leaving big tech, hoping to decentralize some of the power away from these loons running the show. Which is cool. But *stomps foot* I don't WANT to give up my iPhone and Chrome browser and Amazon. I just want people to dial it down and act like fucking adults again. Someone just posted the video of Trump's speech from the WH. It was as sober a speech as he could make. So guaranteed, the media is going to spin it all week to throw fuel on the fire ahead of the inauguration. And it will work because people don't bother reading past headlines and memes much anymore. The media is shit, is what I'm saying. And anyone who still thinks this clampdown on political dissent - swift, coordinated and prepared for - is actually about Trump, needs to open their eyes. Or don't, and keep calling everyone on the other side white supremacists and Nazis and see where that goes in 2 or 4 years. The extremists at either end want to A) tear everything down and start a revolution or B) revert back to the dark ages. It's the reasonable majority in the middle who has to pick a side with one of the these two crazy camps, and they up getting conflated with the extremists, and no one can even see down the middle anymore. Conservatives are not white supremacists. And the liberal left are not anarchists and Antifa. Maybe fuck THAT narrative. What might have happened if a group of heavily armed black men had staged a protest on the steps of what appears to be a government building? The Capitol police were taking a knee in front of a BLM protest at one point last summer. But that was some time after protestors tried to burn down the Minneapolis 3rd Precinct with people inside, and the cops abandoned it. So we've come far apparently, and now police shooting a protestor - a woman protestor at that - just doesn't generate the same outrage it did a few months ago. In fact, I haven't really heard any criticism of him at all. Can't say if that would hold true had the female protestor not been white however, but that's probably irrelevant anyway. Though she's not a black man, I do know that when Susan Rosenberg was convicted for her involvement with the Weather Underground's bombing of government buildings, her sentence was eventually commuted by Clinton when her sentence was deemed excessive for what she'd actually done. She recovered well though, stayed politically active, even got a book published. She now sits on the board for Thousand Currents, which sponsors funding and administration for BLM. So don't be afraid that being branded a domestic terrorist is necessarily a dead-end. People are quite forgiving it turns out. I do know that when the Black Panthers breached the California Capitol in 1967, they were detained and questioned, then released and had their guns returned. But they succeeded in changing the gun laws (for better or worse). Reagan was Governor then, if I have the timing right. Check out this newspaper account from the time, and look at the remarkable difference in tone compared to the outrage editorializing that passes for news today. Can you imagine if this event was written about now? This is what journalism needs to look like again - when people were still intruders, and not Nazis. <applause> All of it, but especially this: “It's the reasonable majority in the middle who has to pick a side with one of the these two crazy camps, and they up getting conflated with the extremists, and no one can even see down the middle anymore. Conservatives are not white supremacists. And the liberal left are not anarchists and Antifa. Maybe fuck THAT narrative.” |
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Post by maurinsky on Jan 14, 2021 8:18:30 GMT -5
I think the fact that the Democrats voted for Biden, who is no left wing liberal, puts the lie to the concept that both sides are just as bad.
I don't like violent protests, but jeezus, if you can't see the difference between the legitimate anger of people that are seeing their brethren slaughtered for NOTHING vs. the "it is illegitimate to elect Democrats so let's take over the Capitol with our guns and bombs", then you are too far from either end.
Private companies, whether we like it or not, can decide how to manage their product. Should social media be a public utility instead? That's a different question.
I don't think conservatives - non-white supremacist, classic conservatives - have a place in today's Republican party. The right wing has been fed from a propaganda network operating for most of my life, between talk radio (which led to the Rwandan massacre, let's not forget) to Fox News to Washington Times to OANN to the WSJ editorial page.
But the Democrats put a quick end to the Bernie campaign, for better or for worse (in my opinion, for better).
Would it be better if we didn't have a dichotomy to choose, but many different places to sit on the political dial? I think so. I support ranked choice voting in my state, but how each state runs elections depends on how the state decides to do it.
I just fucking hate the BOTH SIDES bullshit, because it's a bullshit. One party has completely abdicated the concept of government working for the people, abandoned democracy itself (the GOP has lost the popular vote in the last 3 elections in which they won the Presidency), and leads to a corrupt and increasingly autocratic government.
Just wanted to add all the madness of the Trump administration that didn't involve an insurrection:
*separating families and not keeping track
*babies being put on the stand in deportation case
*appointing Directors of agencies intended to protect us who were adamantly opposed to protecting whatever their agency was designed to protect
*nepotism
*tax cuts for the wealthiest
*rejected emergency aid for California wildfires
*colossal and deliberate mismanagement of the COVID pandemic
*lowered overtime threshold
*made it easier to deny gig economy workers the rights workers should have
*pulled us out of Paris accord for climate change
*loosened regulation on toxic air chemicals
*weakened fuel economy rules
*revoked accounting for sea level rising in flood standards (these are the kind of things that will impact FEMA reimbursement in future floods)
*suspended Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay act
this is the just the tip of the iceberg. He has been a disaster and had made the Republican party toxic for anyone who cares about good governance.
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Post by stellarfeller on Jan 14, 2021 8:59:07 GMT -5
I’m amazed that “Antifa” (remember, it’s not organized and radicalized like the extreme right wing/Trumpers are) has become a thing to oppose, even hate. Antifa means fighting against everything that Trumpers espouse. Antifa doesn’t invade government institutions and cause the deaths of five people (six if you count the Capitol police officer who committed suicide a few days afterward). If one is anti-antifascist, doesn’t that mean one is pro-fascist?
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Post by shaena on Jan 14, 2021 10:01:24 GMT -5
Maurinsky was so much more eloquent, but I am just so over the good people on both sides thing. And comparing taking over the capitol with what happened over the summer.Yes, please tell me again how there are good people on both sides, while one side has Nazi's and proud boys on it. While one side desecrated the American flag turning it black and blue for its cause, and used an actual American Flag to beat the shit out of the very law enforcement they desecrated a flag for?
The side that attempted to albeit laughably call me and a family member out on facebook as Antifa, that ended up NOT being funny, when the comments under it called for taking up GUNS against us. While they proudly flew Fuck Your Feelings and Blue Lives Flags I had to remove democratic signs from my lawn, in fear of retaliation.
It was and still is very difficult for me to take part in any committee now. Frankly I hope it turns out quite a few of them were at the Capitol last week.
I could go on and on, and honestly as a white woman who is relatively settled in life, I could just be one of those middle of the road people, but to me that means I AM rewarding the side that has nothing more to riot on then "our choice fairly lost so we deserve to overthrow our government".
Again, people protesting over the summer? They were not having a white person tantrum. They did not attempt to stop our government from installing a lawfully elected president. There is a difference in intent.
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Post by Eli on Jan 14, 2021 10:02:37 GMT -5
Trump used Twitter as a pulpit to purposefully spread misinformation regarding the election. He used Twitter to incite a riot that endangered the lives of our elected officials. If other world leaders do the same, their accounts should be suspended as well.
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Post by stellarfeller on Jan 14, 2021 11:02:43 GMT -5
I’m so sorry, Shaena - that is horrible 😢
And as far as social media banning Trump, and all the RW yelling about “free speech” - did you know that in Germany, tweets that contain the word “nazi” are automatically blocked? Does that infringe on the right to free speech?
Edit: “you” is general you, of course
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Post by Sprockey on Jan 14, 2021 13:38:43 GMT -5
omg, I wish I had a nickel for everytime I had to read the past week about the Ayatollah having access to Twitter .  |
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Post by nansel on Jan 14, 2021 14:26:15 GMT -5
I've been giving a lot of thought to this whole "there are good people on both sides" shit narrative over the last year. Giving "both sides" an equal voice is what has given rise to the us vs. them extremist voices. Someone deciding that crazed anti-vaxxers are the "other side" from immunology scientists is stupid and intellectually lazy. The media is at fault for some of this, to be sure. And people who go "that sounds like a good idea" are the other part. Refusing to see that sometimes there is no "other side" is not moral high ground, it's arrogantly claiming to be above the fray and refusing to call out ugliness. Bullies love that kind of shit. Trump loves that kind of shit.
I'm a union rep, and I sometimes have to support staff members in conflicts. The last time I heard "well, this just seems to be a personality conflict" when it was a clear case of one person being a total asshole to another, I shut that down. I said flat out "sometimes one side has a point, and the other doesn't". I got some deer-caught-in-the-headlights looks. Yeah, no, that's just being freaking lazy and opting out from critical thinking. |
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emmjay
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Post by emmjay on Jan 15, 2021 8:48:02 GMT -5
I, too, am completely fucking sick of the “both sides” nonsense and the insistence upon comparing the BLM protests and this sedition. Not only because of the difference in intent, but because they are entirely different acts with only superficial similarities. This is by a political science professor at U of Illinois. “Looting is bad, but it’s a problem for police and insurance companies. Trying to burn down a police station or courthouse is worse, but that too is a law enforcement problem, perhaps one requiring federal assistance. Storming the Capitol, forcefully hindering the execution of U.S. law, and trying to kill top elected officials is a national security problem.” arcdigital.media/qanon-woke-up-the-real-deep-state-72bbfcb79488?gi=dcca0f89308b |
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Post by GiftOfFlavor on Jan 15, 2021 15:05:10 GMT -5
I, too, am completely fucking sick of the “both sides” nonsense and the insistence upon comparing the BLM protests and this sedition. Not only because of the difference in intent, but because they are entirely different acts with only superficial similarities. This is by a political science professor at U of Illinois. “Looting is bad, but it’s a problem for police and insurance companies. Trying to burn down a police station or courthouse is worse, but that too is a law enforcement problem, perhaps one requiring federal assistance. Storming the Capitol, forcefully hindering the execution of U.S. law, and trying to kill top elected officials is a national security problem.” arcdigital.media/qanon-woke-up-the-real-deep-state-72bbfcb79488?gi=dcca0f89308bI’d say looting and destruction is also a problem for small business owners already troubled by a pandemic and shutdown who immigrated to the US, did everything they could to become a productive member of society, spent their whole life working towward having their business to support their family and helping their low income neighbors as patients. Also, insurance didn’t cover his damages. “Riots” apparently weren’t in his policy. If anyone thinks insurance just pays for things without incident they really don’t understand insurance. Now that low income community will be without it’s only dental healthcare provider and if people have a problem they’ll have to either make due or travel to another community. 🤷♀️ Violence and destruction has real consequences no matter what the “reason”. |
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Post by villanelle on Jan 15, 2021 15:11:21 GMT -5
Yes! And you know what else is bad? When people steal packages off doorsteps. My friend's brother had an package with a very sentimental item in it--something that can't be replaced and was from his deceased brother-in-law--stolen by porch pirates. Not only are the out the cost of the item, but they've lost a precious item from a loved one.
It's terrible. And porch pirates aren't being given near the attention by either the news or law enforcement, that these riots are.
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Post by GiftOfFlavor on Jan 15, 2021 15:16:20 GMT -5
That sucks. Especially for something very sentimental. Lots of that going on where I am as well. It actually makes the news fairly often here it’s so common! I swear I see a story about that on the news here every couple of weeks, there were more around the holidays - I guess coz more packages...
I think a lot of people are doing PO Boxes and Amazon Boxes now because of that.
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emmjay
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Post by emmjay on Jan 15, 2021 15:23:32 GMT -5
I’m sorry about your friend. It is unfair and I’m sure he is devastated, and it sounds like it will be a big loss for his community. That has nothing to do with my point or the point being made in the piece I linked to.
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