That's exactly it. I've some friends who are on the whole rather apolitical, in fact I'd call them politically ignorant as it's not something they tend to invest any time into, but who either run relatively large social media pages as a side hustle or do so professionally on behalf of the company they work for.
From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case. The companies want to get info out to customers, however feel that if they post without the promo post first they'll be castigated for it. Those with influence pages want to retain engagement and are in the same position.
In essence, those actually supporting the protests have created an environment whereby they'll never be able to judge the true sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed. Something that, in my eyes at least, has dangerous potential.
This tells me the protests are working. When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege and the plight of other groups. But, growth doesn't occur without first being uncomfortable.
> sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed
Sentiment will be judged through action and change.
Unfortunately you're very correct there, though not in the way I think you're assuming. Force people with influence, power, money, ability to be above common problems, to see what's happening and you're not going to get a pat on the back. Change is certainly going to happen, and it's not going to be the change you're hoping for.
Can you clue in the rest of us here? These are very chaotic times and I'd really like to know what the future holds.
I support the protests. What can I change in my behavior to stop creating this dangerous environment?
We don't, in general, talk about the horrible things that were happening back then. Only unlike a lot of racial problems today, they happened in plain sight and were celebrated. I know Rand Paul got a lot of hate for his recent speech against the legislation to make lynching a federal crime, but the things he talked about happening back when lynching was a frequent problem really opened my eyes to how bad things were.
We don't talk about the fact that before MLK was assassinated, he was widely disliked by the american public.
We don't talk about the fact that a lot of American gun control we still have was passed as a reaction to the civil rights movement - as a way to disarm minorities and weaken their ability to protest.
I wasn't there, but I get the feeling we're still a long ways from things being as bad as they were during the 60's civil rights movement.
"Days of Rage" by Bryan Burrough is a good read on the subject (political violence in the late 60s and 70s). There's a good blog / semi-book review that I link people to when they seem intent on learning more of the history (which I originally got from a comment on HN during the 2016 election cycle) [0].
>You have to understand: in 1968, many radicals absolutely believed that the United States was getting ready to collapse. One Weatherman puts it: “We actually believed there was going to be a revolution. We believed 3rd World countries would rise up and cause crises that would bring down the industrialized West, and we believed it was going to happen tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, like 1976.”
There are periods of calm and periods of dramatic unrest. The history of political activism / protests in America touches the civil rights movement, the worker rights / labor movements, etc..., and goes all the way back to the first taxes the newly formed United States federal government tried to levy against domestic goods (in the form of the Whiskey Rebellion [0]). The American revolution itself was the result of a series of protests that started with the Stamp Act of 1765 [1]. It is a truly fascinating history.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helter_Skelter_(scenario)#Back...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party#Founding_t...
Multiple politicians assassinated. Major multi-day riots across multiple cities with hundred dead. Then a president being impeached.
2020 doesn't even come close to the 1960's.
Not really, as senators their first loyalty is to the voters who elect them. Polls show trump has >80% loyalty from GOP voters, who are the ones who control senators via primary elections.
Even a single GOP senator voting against trump in the first trial was a shocking and unexpected result, it’s likely if impeachment was done again the Senate would simply vote to ignore it and not hold a trial (as they have done in the past re: certain judicial impeachments). The only reason the first ‘trial’ was held was to provide political cover for certain moderate senators in their 2020 races.
Not to say that the police haven't committed a ton of violence in these protests, but it's not all them.
Sure, and the other ones look the other way. Totally "good" guys just lettin' bad guys be bad guys. Until the "good" guys start going after and punishing the "few bad ones", they are all bad.
If we're going to use the "just some bad apples" argument, then it might be prudent to apply it to the protestors, too?
At this point it's borderline ignorant to be unaware of the ongoing police brutalities. And if one -is- aware, it's disingenuous to compare what they're doing to some stores being set on fire- turns out people really, really care about property damage suddenly. [0] [1]
[0]: https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor...
[1]: https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor...
> Sure, and the other ones look the other way. Totally "good" guys just lettin' bad guys be bad guys. Until the "good" guys start going after and punishing the "few bad ones", they are all bad.
You seem to have misread "not all the violence comes from police" as "not all of the police are bad", here.
Yeah, sure. So most of the violence comes at the hands of the police, and somehow decades of abuse is comparable to a week's worth of rioting.
18 people died during the Miami riots and 63 people were killed during the LA riots. Friend of mine spent four days being sheltered in a black families house during the Miami riots. In the LA riots looters were driving up into the LA hills to loot wealthy houses.
Meanwhile 2020 'riots' you have people taking their children to protests. And a few Walmarts and other shops got looted.
No comparison at all.
Nobody on the far-left is advocating for the extreme violence. During the 1960s, I believe Malcolm X was ready to have a real war to defend Black Americans. Now, at worse the discord is about justifying some looting that has diminished.
I have seen many people talking about "burning the system to the ground".
Maybe we could consider it purely metaphorical, if there hadn't been a rash of arsons across the US in recent weeks.
https://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-police-warn-of-sharp...
My general feeling is that it is too difficult to manage democracies over large geographic areas because the people at the edges tend to not have enough interaction with each other on a social or economic basis to recognize each other's problems.
So I don't know about CalExit but I have definitely spoken about New England or Northeast Secession (heh NExit) as something I'm at least interested in. I just hope if the opportunity ever comes up we can do it peacefully...
https://www.engadget.com/facebook-limits-boogaloo-groups-122...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/04/boogal...
There's been a lot of reporting on it as they've stepped up action over the last year. Did you not see the news stories about these individuals stationing inside the Michigan Capitol with assault rifles?
Reminds me of "jenkum", the drug the media reported on that turned out to be a prank.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-move...
One of the comments there puts it better than I can:
> Honestly, most of it is genuinely trolling. I don’t go on it anymore (used to more often), but really the whole thing is a meme. Sure, a few people take it seriously, but I have no doubt it is no statistically different than any other group that has a subculture.
> 4chans entire subculture exists to start trends, meme, and get a reaction. The boogaloo movement was always a meme and it is only now being legitimized because of mainstream news coverage. Now, people who aren’t about of the Chan subculture see it and start to believe in it legitimately.. when that never was the case to begin with.
> They did this with the “OK” symbol, Waterproof Iphones, TayTweets, and most recently Boogaloo.
> Now they are doing it with #goBaldForBLM (or at least trying to).
> Just kind of sad to see a credible investigative journalism site constantly spending time to focus on 4chan.. when it’s trolls.. and the only people who take it seriously are the ones who read about it through the lens of an article.
It's the media not understanding the internet and creating their own boogeyman.
Look no further than Pizzagate and now QAnon. Boogaloo may have started out like that but people quickly made it a real thing long before mainstream media jumped on board.
The whole "oh it's only trolling, can't you take a joke" is just a front used for people to shield their true beliefs behind.
Here's a criminal charge[1] against one Boogaloo person. I'd note this sentence: "During the rally LYNAM stated their group was not for joking around"
I'm optimistic that red and blue America will have something more like Czechoslovakia's Velvet Divorce involving minimal bloodshed, but I'd be surprised if the USA makes it to 2100 as a single polity.
They can't tout how horrible and scary the pandemic is (forcibly close all businesses! we're all gonna die! put people in jail for failure to socially distance! take their kids away from them!), while cheering on protests. They're in fundamental conflict and it became too obvious, the obnoxiousness of the contradiction was being pointed out constantly. They had to pick one, so they pivoted.
Don't worry though, they plan to go back to focusing on the pandemic after the protests fade. There is more political juice there yet, perhaps in the fall if the virus picks up.
When I do see or hear numbers pop up in local media, it's often offered without meaningful information about larger trends and lends itself to the same horserace/it's all sports mentality that afflicts political coverage.
I put together my own spreadsheet based on my local health agency's data to try to get a more objective sense of how things are really progressing:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSxCDL6xIQll...
It's more than an academic exercise. I've been citing it as my small company discusses whether to reopen our local office. (There's no business need to do so. Our office can operate entirely remotely -- and has been for several weeks now.)
I'm also trying present the data in a meaningful way -- relative to testing and reopening guidelines. If you're frustrated by local reporting, I'd encourage you to do some something similar for your region.
If we see another phase it will be A1 material again.
Newspapers; I'd almost forgotten about them.
Also, sorry you are getting downvoted. Emotions are running high. I’d guess folks are interpreting your snark against newspapers as snark against the parent.
Number of new cases and new deaths have dropped off a bit and mostly flattened out. Health care capacity is handling current loads. Economy is opening back up..
There is still plenty of talk about COVID-19, but I'm not sure how much cynicism is required to explain why something that is no longer a critically urgent emergency is no longer being reported as a critically urgent emergency.
Now? They've moved on.
You cannot have both.
So either those out and about without masks, or protesting the lockdown, etc. AND the current protests are justified as COVID isn't actually a real concern, OR both sets of protests are unjustified because a lack of concern for COVID is in essence negligent homicide, and the current consort should be labelled as the previous.
What you cannot say is that the first set of actions were unjustified but the second justified, whilst in the midst of the same conditions with the same virus making its way through our people. You may try to insert a "but" in there somewhere, but that will be merely a reflection of your political biases or adherence to the narrative of your chosen publication.
Yes, obviously the novel coronavirus is still here, and it is still a huge concern. This doesn't mean that people who are fed up with generations of police brutality and have taken to the streets to pressure their local leaders to put an end to it are somehow being hypocrites. They are simply demonstrating that ending police brutality is a much more important issue, one they are willing to risk their own health for (not just from the virus but also from tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper sprays, LRADs and more).
At the end of the day, humans are complex and everyone's calculus is different. I have friends who want to protest but have decided not to because they are immuno-compromised. I also have friends who have gone to the protests, and have since been self-quarantining (including calling in sick if their employers have called people back to the office). I also know people, like you, who think protesters are being irresponsible since packed crowds will no doubt intensify the pandemic.
Instead of judging these groups, we should strive to understand where they are coming from and why they may have made those choices, based on sets of circumstances and experiences that will be unique for everyone.
Just to be clear, I didn't state my position above. I support both sets of protests, and believe both to be justified. That's not something I want to derail the thread with though, so was merely pointing out the approach to logical consistency in my first post.
The law has to be blind to different ideas being expressed; they are all valid, with reasonable limitations. And so it was: despite being overwhelmingly unpopular, antilockdown protests were generally carried out unimpeded.
The popular perception isn't bound to be equitable in this way, nor should it be, nor is it obliged to be uniform.
It is totally valid to carry the opinion that protesting lock downs is less legitimate than protesting police violence. There is no contradiction or injustice here.
Somebody that holds this opinion might argue that while both sets of protestors are willingly putting themselves at risk, one was campaigning for an action that would put others who didn't consent at greater risk and the other is campaigning for action that would protect people. That seems very consistent to me.
Of course, the belief in the importance or validity even of the causes of either protest can vary between people, so various people may support none, one or both protests, according to their particular beliefs. I wouldn't call any of these people irrational (though of course I have my own beliefs and only agree with one of these positions).
Well I've noticed that the firing of Inspectors General hasn't been in the news lately. With the Controversy of the Week with Trump, it's kind of hard to keep up.
Which has been his (and Bannon's) general strategy:
* https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...
It is critical to the Democrats to shift the conversation. Clearly blaming Trump for the city's failure isn't going to work, so the pivot was to waiting until there was one particularly bad case of police abuse against a black person and then light the powder keg. If you look back this year there have been some awful cases.
For example, one stands out from February where a man was murdered execution style with 4 shots to the head and back[1]. Never heard of it in the media? That's because the person murdered was white so it was not politically useful to the Democrat media machine.
The takeaway for me is that this is only going to get worst. Elections are still in November. Biden is a terrible candidate so they're going to go absolutely nuts trying to sow discontent, instability, and outright rebellion. Can the US survive it's own media and it's two-party system, especially as foreign actors amplify the media's destabilizing message and focus on polarizing people?
---
[1] https://6abc.com/west-sedgley-avenue-shooting-north-philadel...
I'm glad the Democrats are shifting the conversation. You think this hasn't been happening regularly for decades? At the very least this has been brewing since 2014 and Ferguson.
They might try to blame Trump but honestly he's given the Democrats enough material just by literally stoking the flames instead of trying to be conciliatory.
It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic and now we're just left with the pulpy mess that no one really wants to deal with.