The Murder of George Floyd & Subsequent Protests/Riots

[anticlimatic]

Yes let's scrap the police force and rebuild it from the bottom up as though the founding fathers didn't already do exactly that- as though a hundred years from now, after being polished by bureaucrats unions lobbiests and regulators, it would be any different from the current police force. But hey, if progressive cities want to try that out, have fun slapping a new sticker on the same product if it makes you feel good about yourselves, like you've accomplished a single productive thing, and good luck with the transition.

As for the tired old eye roll inducing racism conversation we are all having for the umpteenth time this century, here's where it's going to hit the same dead end before fizzling back out until next time- many people, myself included, have more important things to deal with, and have zero interest in apologizing for the racism of others by simple virtue of our non blackness and alleged privilege. I'm sorry, it's just never going to happen. You don't ask all black people to apologize for the violent ones in gangs, and you don't ask all Muslims to apologize for isis, so kindly fuck off please and thank you.

Go post a black photo on Instagram instead. Maybe that, once again, will make you feel good about yourself, like you accomplished a single productive thing.

 

[Jonny]

I do not know whether it is to yourself or Mr. Adams I am to give my thanks for the copy of the new constitution. I beg leave through you to place them where due. It will be yet three weeks before I shall receive them from America. There are very good articles in it: and very bad. I do not know which preponderate. What we have lately read in the history of Holland, in the chapter on the Stadtholder, would have sufficed to set me against a Chief magistrate eligible for a long duration, if I had ever been disposed towards one: and what we have always read of the elections of Polish kings should have forever excluded the idea of one continuable for life. Wonderful is the effect of impudent and persevering lying. The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, and what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusets? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.

It beggars belief that any learned person would think the founders intended for us to stop governing ourselves because they'd already done it all for us. Though Mr. Jefferson seems to condone the use of violence, I do not, and I suspect we would be able to establish a more appropriate successor to our current policing force through peaceful means alone.

My favorite quote from ASIP:

"The government of today has no right telling us how to live our lives, because the government of 200 years ago already did."

Classic.

"I planted a tomato plant last year, so I should never have to plant one ever again." Dumb as a fucking rock.

This seems appropriate:

 

[Z Buck McFate]

From NYT:

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska on Thursday became the first Republican senator to say she was considering not voting for President Trump, as she endorsed scathing criticism of the president by James Mattis, the former defense secretary.

Ms. Murkowski said the critique by Mr. Mattis on Wednesday, in which he said that Mr. Trump had divided the nation and failed to lead, was overdue and might be a tipping point that would cause Republicans to air concerns about the president that they had only spoken about privately.

Some Republican lawmakers have found fault with the president’s handling of the unrest convulsing the nation, but Ms. Murkowski was the most explicit so far in her support for the comments by Mr. Mattis, a former four-star Marine Corps general.

“I was really thankful,” Ms. Murkowski told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I thought General Mattis’s words were true and honest and necessary and overdue.”

Ms. Murkowski, one of the few Republicans in Congress who has been willing to break publicly with Mr. Trump, added that when she saw the Mattis statement, “I felt like perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally, and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up.”
​

Bolded is mine. Internal confirmation that this HAS been going on. Until now it's been people like Jeff Flake and other Republicans who weren't running for re-election making this claim.

 

[Lark]

Perhaps they need the right motivation.

As far as alternatives, - I just listed some, there are many more. This is a conversation that was going long before the current insurgency and you should know insurgencies are successful at getting change.

Disempower, Disarm, Disband – For A World Without Police

Here is more reading from my favorite reporting on the US criminal justice system.

Police Abolition | The Marshall Project

Look up the shopping cart theory. If people have the means, they change themselves. Give them the means.

Could just be the extent to which I value lawful conduct and lawful order but I dont think any of the anarchist ideas are great at all.

Its great where you find society strong enough that everyone is engaging in self-government and it is the goal, the imposition of law pales in comparison to where it exists as a result of spontaneous order but its not always possible and its difficult to find during emergencies or crisis too. Just because during crisis and emergency people arent always their best selves, living their best lives, you know what I mean?

Where people hope for anarchy a lot of the time they just get chaos.

Anyway, most left ideas are awesome, its why I'm generally a supporter of left positions, but they do ask a lot of people and if conventional democracies are asking too much of people then they're hardly ready for something even more demanding, make sense? Sound reasonable?

 

[Lark]

Because she is going to give you the right wing martyr version. He wasn't just talking shit.

Report: Tractor-trailer driver killed after shootout had explosives stockpile - News - MPNnow - Canandaigua, NY

I think the incident itself is not so important as the fact that the nut jobs are part of a movement that's becoming increasingly organized and increasingly willing to work with foreign powers, sometimes ones which are ostensibly totally different in out look to them, like the chinese, so long as those foreign powers would allow them to build some sort of crazy ethnocentric nightmare in the USA.

 

[Jonny]

An excerpt from
They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.​

 

[ceecee]

An excerpt from
They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.​

I really urge people to read this amazing book, it digs deeply into the whole - how could it happen here? - question. And that societies never really recover from it.

 

[rav3n]

There's a graphic video embedded in this article but people should watch it, to understand why the police are out of control. They claimed the old man slipped and fell but in actuality, they shoved him hard and he fell, cracked his head open and while blood was pouring from his head, they walked on by.

Here’s Graphic Video of Buffalo Cops Shoving a Protester They Say “Tripped and Fell” – Mother Jones

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

As for the tired old eye roll inducing racism conversation we are all having for the umpteenth time this century, here's where it's going to hit the same dead end before fizzling back out until next time- many people, myself included, have more important things to deal with, and have zero interest in apologizing for the racism of others by simple virtue of our non blackness and alleged privilege. I

I have no interest in apologizing for the racism of others. For me, it is more about personal responsibility. I've had times where I didn't see it as relevant to me or thought it wasn't the right time. I see now that I was wrong, and I wish to do more to correct that. I did not change my square to black on Facebook. Rather, I donated $100 to BLM (waiting for the virtue signalling accusations now that I said I actually did something besides a black square, lol), and plan to work more heavily with organizations involved in these issues. Performative or symbolic actions hold little interest to me. I like my virtue signalling to have more effort behind it.

You don't ask all black people to apologize for the violent ones in gangs, and you don't ask all Muslims to apologize for isis, so kindly fuck off please and thank you.

This is a false comparison. Gangs and ISIS (unless we're counting Mujahadeen here,lol) don't have the full support of the U.S. govenment and taxpayer revenue.

As for disband the police, I'm not sure how I feel about it but admittedly it's not something I've read a lot about.

 

[Jonny]

I have no interest in apologizing for the racism of others. For me, it is more about personal responsibility. I've had times where I didn't see it as relevant to me or thought it wasn't the right time. I see now that I was wrong, and I wish to do more to correct that. I did not change my square to black on Facebook. Rather, I donated $100 to BLM (waiting for the virtue signalling accusations now that I said I actually did something besides a black square, lol), and plan to work more heavily with organizations involved in these issues. Performative or symbolic actions hold little interest to me. I like my virtue signalling to have more effort behind it.



This is a false comparison. Gangs and ISIS (unless we're counting Mujahadeen here,lol) don't have the full support of the U.S. govenment and taxpayer revenue.

As for disband the police, I'm not sure how I feel about it but admittedly it's not something I've read a lot about.

Yeah, it's a ridiculous comparison. Police are a voluntary group identity with top-down policy. Black Americans are citizens who happen to be born with more pigment in their skin. Like, it shouldn't even need to be explained.

 

[Red Herring]

As a European onlooker to all this I am a bit puzzled by the alternatives "this police" or "no police" put forward by both supporters and opponents of the protests.

You guys are aware that police doesn't have to be this violent, this militarized, this hostile, right? That while they might be far from perfect, other developed nations have far less of an issue with this?

I remember watching a TV show about exchange cops, an American officer working with German colleagues and vice versa. The American cop was bewildered at the deescalation and trust in their community of the German cops: "Why aren't you drawing your weapon? Aren't you afraid they might be armed? Aren't you afraid of walking in there unprotected?.." Etc. There is a difference in the training they receive, in the equipment they use and the mentality at work.

I am not saying other countries don't have problems. I am not saying we don't have police misconduct. Or that our police doesn't occasionally receive hostility from people. But different, better, less violent policing is definitely feasable. That should give hope.

 

[chickpea]

 

[anticlimatic]

I have no interest in apologizing for the racism of others. For me, it is more about personal responsibility. I've had times where I didn't see it as relevant to me or thought it wasn't the right time. I see now that I was wrong, and I wish to do more to correct that. I did not change my square to black on Facebook. Rather, I donated $100 to BLM (waiting for the virtue signalling accusations now that I said I actually did something besides a black square, lol), and plan to work more heavily with organizations involved in these issues. Performative or symbolic actions hold little interest to me. I like my virtue signalling to have more effort behind it.



This is a false comparison. Gangs and ISIS (unless we're counting Mujahadeen here,lol) don't have the full support of the U.S. govenment and taxpayer revenue.

As for disband the police, I'm not sure how I feel about it but admittedly it's not something I've read a lot about.

You gave 100 dollars to BLM? Dude. Why? Why do you feel personally responsible if you don't feel like apologizing? Apologizing is typically something we do when we feel personally responsible for a problem.

I don't understand why you are calling it a false comparison or involving the US government. All I am saying is one doesn't blame an entire racial group for the actions of certain individuals within it.

I also don't understand why Johnny, despite issuing a no-contact request some time ago paired with many nasty remarks in my direction (despite zero insulting language from me ever), insists on following up on my exchanges with other people with yet more nasty comments. Grow up, dude.

 

[Yuurei]

So the death of a repeated felon sparks what people are calling an ‘uprising’ and riots so severe that they have put a curfew in place ofr the first time in my 37 years of existence.

Meanwhile a completely innocent man is shot ( but survives) inside his own home, and his wife (GF?) is murdered in her bed during what is essentially breaking and entering by Police and NO ONE is fucking talking about that?

This country has a serious issue with sympathy fo the devil. The deranged and violent, the drug addicts. We have so much love and mercy for them. Those who just dealt a crappy little hand in life but do their best to contribute to society? Well, they knew what their issues and just need to deal with them on their own .

God I fucking hate the world.

 

[Virtual ghost]

As a European onlooker to all this I am a bit puzzled by the alternatives "this police" or "no police" put forward by both supporters and opponents of the protests.

You guys are aware that police doesn't have to be this violent, this militarized, this hostile, right? That while they might be far from perfect, other developed nations have far less of an issue with this?

I remember watching a TV show about exchange cops, an American officer working with German colleagues and vice versa. The American cop was bewildered at the deescalation and trust in their community of the German cops: "Why aren't you drawing your weapon? Aren't you afraid they might be armed? Aren't you afraid of walking in there unprotected?.." Etc. There is a difference in the training they receive, in the equipment they use and the mentality at work.

I am not saying other countries don't have problems. I am not saying we don't have police misconduct. Or that our police doesn't occasionally receive hostility from people. But different, better, less violent policing is definitely feasable. That should give hope.

Yes it is possible to have this kind of police but you are forgetting a few things. Many is USA like it like this or at least they like the mechanisms that make this environment possible. In other words:



1. You can't really have the second amendment of this scale and have German style police. Police by definition needs to have a leverage in order to do their job but here without military style upgrades that simply isn't possible. Especially since the crime itself has military style upgrades/equipment.

2. In Europe there is healthcare that is defined as human right and thanks to that our minds can be more at peace. We aren't running from death and certain bankruptcy most of the time.

3. In general we have more of a say in the terms of multi-party democracy, media or workspace dynamic and therefore the force usually isn't the first impulse.



Therefore this goes much deeper than just "training" since law of the land is fundamentally different.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

To be equally fair the logo of four chan is a clover. "laying off the clover" is just fun word play.

I don't give two shits about 4chan and their little "based" counterculture, so like Steve Rogers, I didn't understand that reference.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

[MENTION=19700]Officer Ed Powell[/MENTION]
It sounds like your concept of draft/election has the principle of direct accountability to the population being served. There is something important in this notion, although I don't know the specifics of best implementation.

Yeah, I don't really know how we'd implement this, but my end goal would be destroying the cultish, militaristic, self-serving nature of police culture in the USA and actually moving it towards public service and safety. They are servants paid by tax dollars, therefore they should have a responsibility primarily to protect citizens, not the elite classes' interests.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Yes let's scrap the police force and rebuild it from the bottom up as though the founding fathers didn't already do exactly that- as though a hundred years from now, after being polished by bureaucrats unions lobbiests and regulators, it would be any different from the current police force. But hey, if progressive cities want to try that out, have fun slapping a new sticker on the same product if it makes you feel good about yourselves, like you've accomplished a single productive thing, and good luck with the transition.

As for the tired old eye roll inducing racism conversation we are all having for the umpteenth time this century, here's where it's going to hit the same dead end before fizzling back out until next time- many people, myself included, have more important things to deal with, and have zero interest in apologizing for the racism of others by simple virtue of our non blackness and alleged privilege. I'm sorry, it's just never going to happen. You don't ask all black people to apologize for the violent ones in gangs, and you don't ask all Muslims to apologize for isis, so kindly fuck off please and thank you.

Go post a black photo on Instagram instead. Maybe that, once again, will make you feel good about yourself, like you accomplished a single productive thing.

Don't invoke the founding fathers unless you know what you're talking about. Even though you're being sarcastic with your opening sentence, it's likely some of them would actually support a periodic reforming and restructuring of those types of institutions. Jefferson suggested the constitution should be rewritten every generation or so to fit the evolving needs and values of US citizens, so it's likely he'd have felt similarly about these types of institutions being reformed and restructured periodically to adapt to the ever-changing culture, and to prevent said institutions from becoming stagnant and full of people acting against the interests of the majority of citizens.

I realize by current standards the founders probably appear to you as ultra conservatives, so you get warm and fuzzy feels in invoking them to justify your own worldview, but they were the most progressive politicians on the planet by the standards of the late 18th century and few of them wanted this country and its institutions to remain treading water, hanging on to outdated ideals or values. Even many of the ones with slaves admitted that slavery was going to have to go sooner than later, in order for the country to survive. One or two put their money where their mouths were, for instance Franklin owned slaves as a young man but became an outspoken supporter of abolition by his twilight years, after visiting black schools and realizing his views on white intellectual superiority had been misguided.

Me, I'm not interested in empty virtue signaling and won't be changing my profile pic to a black square. I prefer to keep any help I offer on the downlow, as I don't really react well to a lot of praise or compliments. The other day there was a black boy holding a sign in our town and a bunch of local bubbas were harassing him, asking him his address, accusing him of trying to incite violence. When I saw this was happening on our local community facebook page, I drove over to the street he was standing on to offer protection in case anyone tried to attack or threaten him. Now you might accuse me of virtue signaling just now, but this is the first time I've chosen to tell anyone on the internet about this. Point being I hate empty virtue signaling, but be careful who you accuse of doing it unless you know for a fact they're doing it.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Libertarian VP candidate Spike Cohen made a good argument about this. A lot of white business owners are assuming looting is being primarily done by protesters. Cohen argued that police forces are so preoccupied with sending the bulk of their officers to meet and provoke people exercising their 1st amendment rights, leaving storefronts and shops essentially unprotected from opportunistic looters who know the police are likely too busy to respond to a bunch of burglary calls. Maybe if the police actually did their jobs and let those protesters exercise their constitutional rights, we'd see far less looting.

On another note, Congressman Amash just introduced a bill that would end qualified immunity if signed into law.

 

[Maou]

I completely agree the police should be rebuilt from the ground up. Just do not make them like the pussy footed glorified soft-security that passes as Police in the UK. America has guns, police need guns. They do not however, need fucking military equipment. If it gets to that point, the National Guard should already be there.