What’s the obvious you’re referring to?

Facebook makes good decisions?

I have no idea what you really mean.

This fall there will be a national referendum on the incumbent; — 180 Proof

I do agree with this. This election is Trump's to lose, not Biden's to win. I still think the latter is fair game, perhaps especially becasue of the situation.

Protesters hand a rioter over to police for what looks like trying to break off some concrete to throw it. That's what's needed. And the police need to respect the peaceful protesters and stop shooting stuff at them.



https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/guaghc/protesters_hand_rioter_over_to_police/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Here's a good reddit quote:

Imagine thinking this is necessary. Listen to that guy's anguish over having his business burned down.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1266847371725541380

Fuck you assholes who justify this shit.

Fuck you assholes who justify this shit. — Marchesk

Ignore them. They're a tiny minority.

I agree with you. Have you noticed the USA is currently on worse footing with itself than HK is with China, and is having worse riots than any country in Africa, in fact anywhere in the world, since the Arab Spring?

There was no looting during the riots in HK.

You're right.

There was no looting during the riots in HK. — ernestm

I admire how organized and disciplined the HK protestors are.

Have you noticed the USA is currently on worse footing with itself than HK is with China, and is having worse riots than any country in Africa, in fact anywhere in the world, since the Arab Spring? — ernestm

Yeah, this blew up real fast.

And yet, already, the protesters’ legitimate grievances are being subsumed by political leaders and others questioning whether they are registering their anger appropriately. This is also a pattern in these moments: the demonstrations, so visible and visceral in the news coverage, become the story. The structural problems being protested start to fade into the background.

...Yet if the anger and frustration from centuries of racial oppression causes a peaceful protest to become “violent” — and most of the reported attacks have been directed against property, not people, though one man was tragically killed in Detroit — suddenly that other kind of violence becomes the dominant story so far as political leaders are concerned, a disruption to the natural order that must be corrected. The systemic racism that has led to so many black lives being cut short becomes secondary.

But it shouldn’t, because that’s the real problem America must grapple with. Otherwise, sooner or later, this will all happen again.

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/30/21275507/minneapolis-george-floyd-protests-police-violence

None of these last-minute parachuters here to virtue signal their "care" and "concern" give a shit insofar as this is the only thing they can't shut up about.

Merged post from @Christian2017:

"I won't flame anyone.

I think this is the end of america.

i think america will be balkanized. i understand sometimes people have very strong emotions and feel the need to get revenge. Personally in my case i dont think it would serve a purpose. i hope you all have a great life. i wish you all the best and i believe i'll see some if not all of you all on the other side.

sorry for all my dickishness."

Direct replies to this post to @Christian2017.

I think this is the end of america.

Or rather the end of an unjust America.

in my opinion this is the end of america.

@christian2017

Well, separate the artist from the art and say what you need to say.

Huh. Bet I can top ya. I think an all-seeing and all-knowing super being is watching you and me right now and one day will come to destroy the whole planet after his winged children do some crazy things first. Oh, you too? :)

Anything can happen dude. The world could end before you finish reading this sentence.



It is severely unlikely that would happen. Total chaos? Martial law? Media/phone/internet blackout? Mass killing? All possible. You know for an alleged man of faith you're awfully concerned with the world and its ways. Eh. So am I.

@christian2017

No. It's going to be ok. What do you want to see happen as a result of all this?

in my opinion this is the end of america. — christian2017

What do you think would replace it?

thats fair.

assuming there is a heaven i want to be killed. but i'm not committing suicide. Leviathan and sharks exist so that no one has to commit suicide.

something akin to the Balkan peninsula. but i could be wrong.

something akin to the Balkan peninsula. but i could be wrong. — christian2017

You mean different regions becoming their own countries? The protests aren't aimed at succession, and they have a common goal which is to force police reform. Things could devolve into more chaos, but it's not putting pressure on states breaking up. This isn't a regional fight between different states.

Fuck you assholes who justify this shit. — Marchesk

You haven't bothered to read and understand @Baden or @StreetlightX.

If you just want to shout and insult, you can do that in youtube comments.

The relevant issue of political philosophy, as has been said here and elsewhere, is the legitimacy of the state.

For most people (in particular in the West), state legitimacy is founded on a fair application of justice. The "rule of law" is a term in political philosophy coined to distinguish with the previous theory of the divine right of monarchs to decide what they want.

For instance, you seem to think the looting and burning things down is a crime and perpetrators should be arrested for that. Ok, now if I ask you how you know it's a crime? You'll certainly shout: Because it's on video!!! But does that establish it's a crime? Maybe all the looters are co-owners of the places they're looting and have had a share-holders meeting and decided to liquidate their stock in a disorganized manner?

The cover-up of the murder of George Floyd is at the same intellectual absurd level as someone now trying to argue epistemological edge cases that have not been ruled out "100%".

There is simply no way to even plausibly argue what we see is not a murder, at least in the second degree, in broad daylight by 1 police officer and 3 accomplices protecting the first.

You may say, "sure, fine, it's a murder and a cover up by the police, the prosecutor, the coroner, the local, state level, and federal level law enforcement, but that doesn't justify looting! Oh the humanity!", along the same lines as privileged news broadcasters and privileged commentators on the internet are trying to make.

But they cannot be dissociated; the murder and the coverup of the murder is simply proof positive there is no equal application of the law. Heart disease has never protected strangulation before. If you were bullying a kid, got them in a choke hold, and continued a choke hold for 9 minutes while the person you're choking said they were unable to breath, while onlookers told you you're choking and killing them but they couldn't intervene due to your 3 friends shielding you, "underlying conditions" is totally irrelevant. Heart disease would only be a defense if the death was genuinely by surprise in an otherwise normal wrestling match. The murderer in this case also knows the victim and may know of the prior condition, in which case the prior condition may actually increase the evidence of premeditated murder (moving it from 2nd to 1st as the choice of tactic to "restrain a cuffed man on the ground" is evidence of a thought out plan to murder, targeting a weak spot), not decrease it. Indeed, it is evidence (though evidence is not proof) that these police officers were enlisted to carry out a murder in broad daylight as part of a political plan to create race riots and a new national narrative more favourable to those in power than a great depression. Whatever the truth is, it is simply conclusive from the video itself that a murder had taken place, and any other person would be immediately arrested with their accomplices and charged with murder.

The idea that arrests only happen after a total and thorough investigation to know "all the facts" that the prosecutor offered as plausible deniability for his actions, and the actions of every level of law enforcement above and below him, to coverup of a murder, is laughably absurd.

Similarly, if you chased down a white jogger in the middle of the day and shot them, you'd be immediately arrested; if you argued that "they might be a robber" and "anyways, it was self defense as they went for my friends shut gun" it would be simply dismissed as lunacy by police, prosecutors, judges and your own defense council, because obviously the person being chased by people with guns is in the position of self defense. Such a defense would be even more absurd, so absurd no one would every even dream it up, if the scenario was black men chasing down a white jogger (obviously the white jogger would be completely justified in immediately assuming it's a gang robbery or abduction).

So, if the law is not equally applied, then the law has no basis of legitimacy in Western political theory.

What is who's property is a legal definition, if there is no justifiable legal reference frame, then there is no basis upon which to condemn looting and arson.

As Baden points out, it becomes group against group, each with their own idea of legitimacy and their actions can only be evaluated in terms of effectiveness in pursuing their own idea of legitimate political power.

The same American's condemning the looting as "unjustifiable in principle" are the same American's that completely disregard the relevance of laws of other countries when American soldiers bomb, raid and kill. If you think through the political theory that justifies disregarding the Taliban's law, or Sadam's law, and categorizing it as illegitimate, you will see that the exact same chain of reasoning can be used to conclude America's laws are no longer legitimate; if so, all agents of the state become criminals from this perspective, and all acts of violence against them are in principle justifiable; only what tactics are effective is the analytically relevant question from arriving at such a conclusion (just as American generals wonder whether bombing a school or a wedding is effective even if they are sure in their heart of hearts it's in principle justified).

Now, true, the looters, for the most part, do not carry out such politically philosophic reflections, they have mostly not the time nor the education. However, this philosophical rendering of things is also an intuitive visceral experience. One does not need to be a philosopher to feel the pain and humiliation of double standards; it is simply an obvious lived experience. Likewise, one does not need to be a philosopher to conclude society is not providing a dignified future for oneself and one's community, one need simply observe no such options available. When one sees a murder on video in broad daylight carried out over 9 calmly excruciating minutes, and then see the double standard of justice spring to the defense of the murderers, one does not need to be a philosopher to simply lose all respect for the state, agents of the state and the property the agents of the state are enlisted to protect. Once that respect is gone completely, one simply follows one's own idea of what is justified: to take from the shops what one cannot buy.

The peaceful protesters are laudible only insofar as their belief in peaceful protesting ability to influence a fair (enough) political process is actually true. If the mechanisms by which peaceful protesting was effective in the past, which is debatable as otherwise why would society come to such a point, then peaceful protesters are less laudible than the looters and indeed the police; for at least the looters and police have some sort of realistic political understanding. American's today do not condemn the Boston riots and looting that birthed America, but the privileged classes that owned the tea did so at the time; so, from a moral perspective, this maybe all that we are seeing, and nothing else.

assuming there is a heaven i want to be killed. but i'm not committing suicide. Leviathan and sharks exist so that no one has to commit suicide. — christian2017

The US is a leviathan. Arent you one of its scales? :)

true.

probably.

What i meant when i used the term was that skydiving, fighting a shark with a pair of garden shears and fighting sharks is the reason why noone should ever commit suicide. I would imagine alot of ancient hunter gatherers felt the same way.

Whereof one does not speak of the existential violence of people's everyday lives, one should STFU about the broken windows of MNCs.



The crocodile tears of those whining about protester violence can go shine some cop boots so they can be better licked.

What i meant when i used the term was that skydiving, fighting a shark with a pair of garden shears and fighting sharks is the reason why noone should ever commit suicide. I would imagine alot of ancient hunter gatherers felt the same way. — christian2017

That and coronary artery disease. No, no one has to commit suicide. :)

I'm for protesters arming themselves for the same reason I'm for them using video cameras; it forces a lethally armed police force with a history of brutality against minorities in situations like these to be able to be held accountable. Cops are not minority communities' friends, they show up in force whenever those communities start looking like they're trying to gain more political autonomy. — fdrake

How does that work in practical terms? Do the affected communities hold their own trials by force?

During the previous struggle for independence from 1919-1921 though (which independence was won only for the South), what did demonstrably and unequivocally work was organized targeted violence against elite figures in the British army (with operations led primarily by the revolutionary leader, Michael Collins). When the big boys couldn't sleep soundly in their beds, they came to the table. Cut the snake off at the head and it shall slither to you. — Baden

That was a literal war for independence though. Are PoC going to secede from the US? Regardless, if you had advocated shooting the Koch Brothers, Jeff Bezos etc. my reaction would have been more amicable. But in our hypothetical armed struggle, the people that die will not be the people who control the system. It's going to be the poor, again.