noemon wrote:1) If you have not seen these videos, perhaps you should before you post them and prove the opposite of what you thought. Both of these videos prove beyond any doubt that what we consider "police brutality" in Greece would not even register in the US. Our normal is way far away from the US's normal. Both of these videos have no brutality by any measure of what is going on in the US and in most cases you see police running away rather than running forward, you see police holding the line while having molotovs thrown at them, the very few instances you see police pushing people, even that is like a child's push with noone falling or hurting themselves and with extreme caution and in Greece we have instituted yearly parades since 2011 against police brutality, even that we do not consider it tolerable and we do something about it.
2) Was this supposed to address an argument of mine or were you just hoping to shut me up?
3) You think this above is "awful", but you are trying to argue that a lot worse police brutality committed both by the US and Israel is either fine or just collateral damage in the pursuit of law & order.
Sorry but the only one who seems to be okay with police brutality here would be you, when committed by Greek police at least. I'm not ok with American, Chilean or Israeli police brutality - particularly when it ends with people killed - or other forms of abuse of power, but I'm also not okay with looting, arson, battery and murder, that needs to be stopped no matter how righteous your cause is and unfortunately that needs to be done by using force, even if it's the least force necessary to accomplish this task. I'd rather have the police do it instead of private citizens because the latter will tend to act with more force than necessary if they have the means (i.e. firearms) to do so, as the LA riots in 1992 painfully showed.
Let's continue. Greek police shooting border migrants, maiming and even killing one:
Now a quickie one before getting to work:
Now pretty standard protest stuff:
And
here, a report claiming that police brutality is increasing, rather than decreasing, in Greece.
noemon wrote:What Trump supporters do should have no bearing on whether the American should fight for everyone to be the same under the law. Why the heck would you think it does?
It doesn't, but it has a bearing on
how to fight it. It can be done it by voting Trump out, along with negligent Governors, Majors and Congressmen (this would be step #1 don't you think?) but particularly him, which also happens to be the most democratic way possible for that matter; or it can be attempted to be done by force, a way that will only lead many people who would otherwise stand against police brutality and dislike Trump to go for authoritarian measures to stop byproducts of riots such as looting, arson, battery and/or murder.
It's entirely up to them, but if they prefer the latter they will have to deal with the consequences. I'd respectfully advise the former and actually succeed in doing so, in the same way this succeeded in other demands (e.g. say, for example, the Dear Colleague letter and all related laws passed in several states relating to consent) but hey that's just me.
von Clausewitz wrote:Blind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.
@Wellsy I beg to disagree, a great example of a conquest that was reached using the institutions in place would be the racial desegregation of public schools - and this was long before the race riots of the 1960s. Even worse, the use of violence by those who weren't willing to comply with the courts was one of the reasons of why they failed. In that sense, the most obvious and indeed revolting violence of those years was indeed started by the White Supremacists, not the African Americans - and theirs was a reaction to that as well.
Beren wrote:Law and order will be restored shortly and this will affect African-American rather than Caucasian voters and the 2020 Democratic National Convention rather than the November elections. Police brutality and racism still will be issues in November, while law and order won't.
That sounds nice in theory, but history would suggest otherwise. Nixon, for example, successfully campaigned on a law and order platform after the DNC riots in Chicago and the MLK riots nationally in 1968 (in Chicago, too, Major Daley took a harsh attitude that actually reminds one of Trump, and not only he was reelected but he died in office in 1974). After the 1992 LA riots, the Democratic Major retired and the election the following year was won by a Republican.
The longer this goes on, the more viable this kind of "be tough" stuff becomes, regardless of whatever isolated cases @Saeko or others may try to present.
But yes, if violence stopped soon then maybe this will be averted. As usual it all depends on how many people are affected, but it doesn't look good for the Democrats. Even worse since it's happening largely if not only in Democrat-led places, the people sending the cops or the National Guardsmen to repress both rioters and even peaceful protesters are part of the party, the people who are being repressed aren't Democrats but if they voted I bet it wouldn't be for Trump. The latter is obviously a problem for Biden since he needs the anti-Trump camp to rally around him and every vote he can get, or he's toast. I truly hope for a Biden win, despite his shortcomings, but I'm pessimistic after this week.
I hope my pessimism is not warranted and that @Saeko for example is right. But history doesn't support this.