There is widespread rationalization and support for the "few bad apples" perpetrating violence/looting/burning/rioting. There is very little condemnation. Lots of quoting MLK Jr. "rioting is the voice of the unheard" and yet MLK Jr. certainly did not practice or advocate violence.
If the protesters can't regulate their own bad apples then how can they judge police for not being able to?
Currently, this is two groups of unethical idiots fighting with each other. With each group's extremists serving to justify the other's extremists.
The outcome is easily predicted. Either the protesters take the ethical high ground or they lose.
Police are hired by a system, trained on constitutional law, trained in law enforcement technique, take an oath to enforce the law (including the constitution and the public trust), are paid money for their on duty actions, and have a system of discipline and internal review.
What the protestors have in common right now is that people showed up at a place and at a time. Protestors have a right to assemble, they inherently have little right to inhibit an anarchist from protesting at the same location without breaking laws or even a holier than thou ethics. That the press have captured intentional subversion by white supremacists, boogaloos, and even police furthers this false dichotomy.
Police are just people. Protesters are just people. Every one of them has to decide what they will and will not abide.
It's not a matter of protesters not being able to stop the extremists among them. They're not even trying. They don't even want to.
The problem is that most people (including here in these comments) are rationalizing the actions of these extremists, hence the misapplied MLK Jr. quote. This is an implicit endorsement.
A black police officer was killed by extremists. There is serious violence and burning by extremists. These acts are being implicitly endorsed. In the same way Trump implicitly endorses the behavior of his movement's extremists, by not vehemently denouncing it and distancing himself from it.
It doesn't require training or an oath to condemn extremists and seek to exclude them from your movement. It just requires principle.
Anyone can become a protester by showing up with a mask and a brick in a sock, while the police force is an actual organisation with rules and plans.
Your comparison is very flawed.
And they beat him, demonized him and arrested him. More recently the President and his supporters called Kaepernick “a son of a bitch” when he was peacefully protesting and the wider society just yawned.
It’s kind of hypocritical for the country with the largest military in the world to say that violence doesn’t achieve anything. Peaceful protest and singing Kum Bah Yah didn’t work.
The US doesn’t mind collateral damage to achieve its goals as long as the damage is in a foreign country.
Yeah but you know, one group _took oath to protect and serve_ and the other didn't.
It's like when Trump say some racist shit VS when your drunk uncle says the same thing, you can't put both sides to the same standards.
Everybody condemn rioters, but for some reasons a lot of people, including the president and many officials, manage to rationalise police brutality and if you don't see that as the obvious main issue you're most likely in the wrong.
> The outcome is easily predicted. Either the protesters take the ethical high ground or they lose.
This is the kind of thoughts I had when I was 15, I don't even know what to reply to that anymore.
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Also, why do people keep creating new accounts to post these very poorly thought comments ? Don't you have the balls to attach your speech to your semi public internet presence or are you just trolling ?
I think it's fair for someone on the fence, or visiting the conversation from the other side, to comment on the crimes of both sides without fear of being personally insulted on HN.
We can condemn the police and hold them to the much higher bar they should be held to, and also condemn whatever looting and vandalism is occurring. "Two wrongs" etc.
I do condemn both, but you have to remember that one caused the other and one is a matter of your country becoming an authoritarian police state, not the other.
I'd take temporary riots over permanent US style law enforcement abuse. In a perfect world I'd be happy with none of the two but were not in a perfect world.
So what exactly does someone "deserve" for expressing a contrary opinion?
And this is the kind of insult I used until I was 12. Either address the argument or don't. Bless us lesser beings with your wisdom.
"Don't you have the balls to attach your speech to your semi public internet presence"
Pretty easy if all of your opinions are borrowed from others.
If you actually consider every issue for yourself then you're going to need to have discussions/disagreements.
And in modern "leftist" culture it's absolutely not permitted to disagree on certain issues. There is a correct way of thinking and any deviation makes you an enemy. You're either onboard wholesale for everything (making you a second class "ally" if you're out of the relevant racial/gender group) or an enemy.
I want to live in a good world as much as anyone. I have no belief in the superiority of any race or sex. I absolutely would have supported MLK Jr. and I'm fairly certain of this because my parents did and I have a lot in common with them.
And yet I find myself dismayed by the whacky thinking that has infected part of American culture. There is a new world in which racism isn't racism if it's aimed at certain racial groups and violence isn't violence if it's against police or certain racial groups. Permanently destroying people's lives is okay now too, as long as they made some kind of mistake related to a hot issue.
This stuff is insane and totally counter productive. The majority of people are too smart and good to buy into this perverted worldview. Most people are never going to come around to the worldview where it's not-so-bad to kill a police officer that is responding to a break in.
What we should hope to see is a separation process, where the extremist crazy people and ideas are abandoned.
There seems to be a hostage/hijacking situation, where the majority are being cowed/controlled by the extremists, dooming the movements to failure.
An enemy of racial equality couldn't organize better sabotage than what the people involved are seemingly doing on their own.
I just did and you don't seem to have noticed. Protester never took an oath, the police and the president did, that's all there is to know, stop acting like the riots are the main issue in today's America, that's a pretty small hill to die. Do you think nation wide riots appear out of thin air? Don't you think it's a symptom of a much deeper issue? Do you think people go out everyday to get gassed and beat up for fun and giggles?
There is always a good rule of thumb to estimate on which side of the fight people are, look at the group which has nothing to lose anymore, that's most likely the one which is right.
> This stuff is insane
You know what's insane? Seeing a man being executed by the police on television. Look at the history of black Americans, they never earned anything by sitting in the corner and licking the white man boot. Riots are always a necessary evil.
The only hijacking of the situation I see is people like you trying to make the debate about "is rioting good or bad?" instead of the hundreds of other question you could ask like "why is the president calling for 'domination' of every protests", "why are we seeing hundreds of videos of people being abused by law enforcement?"
> Pretty easy if all of your opinions are borrowed from others.
Man, in what kind of world do you live if you think you have original ideas pure of any influence... Give me a break
> I absolutely would have supported MLK Jr
But what are you doing today? The opposite. It's easy to say "I would have been against slavery back in the days" yeah ok sure, most people say that, most people weren't, and of the one who were most didn't do anything
It's the usual double standard "Tiananmen Square protesters were so brave, the Arab spring revolutions were so beautiful, the end of slavery was good, &c." yet when it happens under your own nose you have officials asking for "no quarters" and send the army in the street to maim and kill
> where the extremist crazy people
Yeah these extremist crazy people asking for the end of systemic racism, police abuse and the death of unarmed people in the hands of the police, they are such vile beasts...
I don't even understand where half of your rant is trying to go, it doesn't really seem to be about the same topic as your original comment so I'll leave it at that.
The other is a loosely networked group of malcontents and opportunists with a relatively low regard for commercial property rights and capitalism.
It's disingenuous to equate them, and something tells me you know this and set up a throwaway account to protect your main from the entirely predictable barrage of criticism.
This is exactly the same reason police officers are ethically in the wrong. They could decide that "enough is enough" and push out the "bad apples" among them. Instead, they do nothing. That is their ethical failing.
The protesters (and their supporters) are doing the exact same thing, ethically. They refuse to even attempt to push out the extremists, as evidenced by the widespread rationalization and minimization of their actions.
These are very basic ethical dilemmas. Do you or don't you call out and punish bad actors among your group?
Ancient tribes were generally okay with anyone of their tribe committing any atrocity as long as it was against a member of a foreign tribe.
Civilized people condemn and punish even members of their own tribe and do it even when the victim is a member of a foreign tribe.