> one incident thousands of miles away that happened to be captured on a smartphone

This seems incredibly ignorant. The "incident" was a murder, in broad daylight, by a police officer.

8,000 miles away, give or take, and not Europe. And you don’t know why? For shame.

https://twitter.com/joshuapotash/status/1267327498339127298?...

I do know why. The death of one man is a tragedy, the deaths of thousands, merely a statistic. Edited to delete reaching too far

It's not "for this guy in particular". Merely the straw the broke the camel's back.

Don’t know where you got ‘riots all over the world’ from, Mr Throwaway? And you seem to be saying that ‘prior convictions’ excuse this appalling act? Again - for shame.

>Hundreds of thousands are dead in Europe from a virus

The majority of whom where very old and/or in ill-health and had a 5-10% chance of dying in the next year anyway.

You don't seem to attach much value to the lives of the elderly and those who have underlying health conditions. I presume that's because no one you care about, including yourself, is in that category. That's a pretty callous attitude. At 78 you have about a 5% chance of dying in the next year but if you've lived to 78 then your life expectancy is about 10 years. 10 years thrown away so some people can go on a march because they're angry about someone dying. You couldn't make it up.

> they're angry about someone dying.

They're not angry about someone dying!

That's disingenuous, and breaks the basis of your argument.

The problem isn't dying at all, it's why.

They're angry about a murder, which reminds people there are too many murders.

Angry at a murder by a police officer who thought he could casually do so in broad daylight surrounded by onlookers, because he lives in a culture where he expects to get away with it.

Angry at a culture where a police officer can reasonably think he'll get away with it, because they often do.

Angry at the other officers on the scene who went along with it instead of intervening.

Angry at all the other racist murders that keep happening, and systematic racism on a massive scale in general.

That said I thoroughly agree with your point about protecting the elderly. And for that matter, protecting large numbers of young with asthma and diabetes, and conditions nobody knows about because they didn't matter before. (How easily people reduce these things to "just old people" so they can be ageist).

Trouble is, there's a real dilemma over the right and effective things to do. I think there is a deep human social instinct in play. The protests are not about one person dying, or one person being murdered even. They are about a serious systemic problem which undoubtedly results in large numbers of people, more black than not, dying prematurely. As well as a culture problem, which maintains that problem as those with more influence in society treat the problem as unimportant. I would not be surprised if the number of premature black person deaths in the USA, directly or indirectly caused by racism, comfortably exceeds the number of deaths caused directly or indirectly by COVID-19 in the end.

>You don't seem to attach much value to the lives of the elderly and those who have underlying health conditions. I presume that's because no one you care about, including yourself, is in that category. That's a pretty callous attitude.

My parents are in that category, but I attach a very high negative value to using violence (or threat of it) to control people's behaviour. From my perspective it's extremely immoral to say to a huge swarth of the population: you can't work or meet your friends for the next few months, or else we'll throw you in jail if you're caught. I.e. human rights (free movement, association) are human rights; they're not compromisable just because somebody decided it's an emergency or there's some greater good that needs to be enforced. Yes it's reasonable to argue that those at risk have a right not to be infected (e.g. to require potential carriers to stay away), but this doesn't extend to requiring people they have no proximity/interaction with to stay at home and not interact with each other.

> 10 years thrown away so some people can go on a march because they're angry about someone dying.

10 years lost by one person, vs 2-3 years lost by 10 people due to the permanent negative effects on lifetime outcomes of poverty resulting from the lockdown-induced depression. Not to mention lifetime reduction in standard of living. In terms of measure that actually account for this, Quality-Adjusted Life Years, it's like the intervention is probably not a net positive: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/economic-cost-o....

>I presume that's because no one you care about, including yourself, is in that category.

Also, in general, making decisions based on their emotional effect on you is a selfish and unprincipled approach to any kind of public policymaking.

> human rights ... they're not compromisable ... or there's some greater good that needs to be enforced ...

Well, there is (was?) the Patriot Act because 3000 were killed in a terrorist attack. This allowed for indefinite detentions, unwarranted search and surveillance, etc. If it is still in act, then it lasted almost 20 years.

I don't assume you agree with measures like the Patriot Act, but I think some weeks of quarantine can be justified by the more than 100000 covid victims in the US, so far.

Your conclusions are highly emotional and based on speculated consequences and thus any decisions you believe should be made would be too, ie the opposite of what you think ought to be the case. It's all about how you may be affected financially and psychologically and may therefore suffer a lower quality of life and lose 2 or 3 years of life decades hence. And for you, that trumps your parents' generation's well being in the here and now.

I would be prepared to raise lockdowns and "sacrifice the elderly" (no, I don't hope they die, I would just advocate instead for better equipping care homes with PPE and sealing them off from visitors) for the sake of younger people. But it isn't really how I myself may be affected, as my existing lifestyle of remote work and reclusive living in the countryside handles the lockdown quite well. Rather, I am concerned about a generation much younger than myself which strict lockdowns prevent from engaging in the perennial rituals of youth. All the reasonable outlets for courtship have been closed in some places for months. You might laugh and say that young people can just suck it up, but lack of courtship opportunities is such a stressor and a source of social instability that large numbers of young men without such prospects are a major focus of their country’s domestic intelligence service around the world.

I agree with you but people being intimate with one or two other people from their locale is a whole different scenario to the protests I've seen where people are ignoring the most basic precautions in crowds numbering thousands.

Where do you think many people find others to be intimate with if not at mass events? Pubs, discos, music festivals, block parties, etc. are the sort of places where young people have always had an outlet to get their fuck on or establish serious relationships that lead to a family, and therefore IMHO it was wrong to prohibit them and go into lockdown for the sake of the elderly (who could be kept protected in some other way). And if those other large events for entertainment and socializing’s sake should permitted, then it would make no sense to complain about political protests being held.

>It's all about how you may be affected financially and psychologically and may therefore suffer a lower quality of life and lose 2 or 3 years of life decades hence.

It's not affecting me at all; I work in finance, in a role that's fine with working from home. I actually made a bunch of money from the massive volatility that the lockdown announcements caused. If you're incapable of making decisions that aren't solely based on self-interest, that doesn't mean it's correct to project and assume everybody else thinks the same.

I'm not in an at risk group but like everyone my life has been restricted greatly these last three months. These mass gatherings of selfish, self regarding, moral guardians risks extending this thing further and deeper for an extremely nebulous benefit.

>These mass gatherings of selfish, self regarding, moral guardians risks extending this thing further and deeper for an extremely nebulous benefit.

Are you in an at-risk group for police brutality? The benefit if the protests achieved their aims would be a lot less nebulous for those people who are.

No but then I've never passed a counterfeit nor robbed a woman at gunpoint in her home either. Also as I pointed out elsewhere the risk of death a person of color by the hand a black or Hispanic cop is at least as great as by a white policeman

>No but then I've never passed a counterfeit nor robbed a woman at gunpoint in her home either.

The majority of interaction with Americans I have is via this site, and I've seen quite a few comments over the years by people who claim to have received bad treatment at the hands of police in spite of doing nothing wrong.

Reply to sibling's reply to me. Why do you think she was subjected to that? I would guess it's because of the high levels of illegal immigration into European countries from Africa and many other places, including the trafficking of women for prostitution. It sucks for your gf that she perhaps looked to these policemen like she maybe fitted the demographic somehow but what are the police supposed to do?

To my sibling commenter (because reply stops at this depth):

> I'm not black but I've been subjected to stop and search on the streets of London. I've been taken aside and put in a room by police while they checked me out on entering the UK only to eventually be told "OK, you can go" at the end of it, no apology. But generally I've found with police that if you're polite and cooperative they are respectful in return. My first boss in the UK, who wasn't white, one of the first things he said to me was to be wary of black people, they have a chip on their shoulder. I was pretty shocked to hear him say that actually.

I'm not black either, and I live in the UK.

I've been stopped by police, I've seen others stopped by police, and I've been with people who are stopped by police.

For the most part the interactions have been fine, but I have seen what looked like black folks "hassled" in London which I have not seen happen to white folks. It is just anecdata and may be nothing but random experiences.

For me the most striking difference was on the border between France and Switzerland.

My girlfriend was black; I was white. We were stopped at the border driving across, by men with extremely large guns. I got a cursory skim of my papers, but my black girlfriend had to get out of the car, be detained for a while, have her papers checked other and generally given a hard time. Even though she had a stronger connection to both countries than I did. However we both had UK passports. They basically didn't believe she was a UK citizen, or that she worked for the UN... just down the road!

Eventually they let us drive on, but it was a very striking difference in treatment.

I'm not black but I've been subjected to stop and search on the streets of London. I've been taken aside and put in a room by police while they checked me out on entering the UK only to eventually be told "OK, you can go" at the end of it, no apology. But generally I've found with police that if you're polite and cooperative they are respectful in return. My first boss in the UK, who wasn't white, one of the first things he said to me was to be wary of black people, they have a chip on their shoulder. I was pretty shocked to hear him say that actually.

many people (myself included) don't think of it as an incident, but murder - which is just another case of long-running systemic racism and police brutality in the US.

Europe is doing much much better than the US in terms of dealing with the virus, so it's actually not unreasonable to say that it might be a risk worth taking.

Is Europe doing much better? I don't think so. Anyway who are you to decide it's ok to risk more dying so you can protest? That policeman made a similar judgement, I don't think he expected the man to die but he was prepared to risk it.

It's also quite bizarre to see people dying because they are black. Actually it's so bizarre that people can't help but have to break rules to send a message.

As far as I can tell, it's not about that one 'incident' but about all the deaths that weren't recorded, and the many lives that are spent in fear.

There are lots of black policemen in America, black police chiefs, black mayors And in terms of being killed, the people black people are most at risk from are other black people, by a wide margin

Is this also true for being killed by a black police officer? If so, please add a reference.

Otherwise it's quite expected that in a segregated society, people are killed by in-group members. This would only be different if there is a huge number of lynch mobs.

That said, there is another issue hidden beneath 'by a wide margin'. It's also bizarre that there is so much more crime among black people, and that blacks are over-proportionally incarcerated. The easy answer is that blacks are so much more violent. But if you look closer, don't you think that's a bit puzzling?

You cannot draw simple conclusions I believe but still the stats show that

Black and Hispanic police are as likely or more likely to kill people of color as white officers

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shooti...

With regard to your second point, you're hinting at something, why don't you spell out your aetiology for the high levels of crime along black people along with your evidence for that causation.

> Black and Hispanic police are as likely or more likely to kill people of color as white officers

If that's true, it suggests the racism problem is more serious than we thought; that police of all colors may be endemically racist as a group; that it's not just mainly white police.

That said, we don't see black-on-black murders of innocent people so much. This might be due the symbolism of white-on-black murders in broad daylight with onlookers. Or it might not. Regardless, it's all racism if innocent black folks are getting murdered more often.

>That said, we don't see black-on-black murders of innocent people so much.

Really? The murder rate inside the black community is massively higher than within any other community in America. Also black people murder more white people than vice versa. If you take account of the different community sizes the disparity becomes even more extreme. If this is coming as news to you I don't know where you've been all your life.

Sorry, I mis-wrote that due to an editing mistake, and it's too late to edit the comment now.

What I meant to write was we don't see black-on-black police murders of innocent people hitting the big news and causing mass demonstations so much.

You're right we don't see them hitting the news and causing mass demonstrations. We also never have mass demonstrations when a black person kills a white person. And yet interestingly, far more white people are killed by black people than vice versa.

Fair argument. If you are interested in a moved goalpost: If 9 out of 10 officers are black in a black neighborhood, then the majority of victims is shot by black officers. The question is: How are black people treated when they are in a non-black neighborhood.

My 'aetiology', I think it comes down to less opportunities. Without discipline that comes from a stable environment, motivation can easily turn to violence and crime. This leads to difference in police behavior. I have nothing to back this up and I don't know how to 'cure' this.

To bring this back to the start: All I want to say is that the protests are not that bizarre. America is the cultural center of the West, people are as informed about this incident as they are about their local news. Many don't want to live in a racist future, even more so for their children. So they risk the lives of their parents to improve the lives of their children.

Was this a death caused by racism? I don't know. It appears to be. Thus the protests.