this is spot on. the rejection of celebrities is VERY important. once someone controls the narrative, they control everything. my only complaint is the distancing of “rioting” from uprising/rebellion. it’s an historically important thought. “race riot” used to refer to u.s. white people attacking and killing black folks. it must have been a confusing phrase after watts.
the important part is - very awesome text! every dumb liberal should read this.
p.s. explain oakland
this feels like an implicit endorsement of “non-violent” ideologies. people popped off shots in the air on monday. people used extremely violent slogans and even more violent rocks when confronting cops. is that a bad thing? i sure fucking hope not.
The protesters could easily get the Right Wing on their side if they would just put on their own paramilitary gear and hide behind barricades with their own weapons trained on the police. The last time that happened, there was nothing but praise from FOX News.
yes, racist right wing militias with aryan identity fetishes that encourage underground organizing would certainly get on board with black folks engaged in generalized rebellion. [/sarcasm]
If you can find any reasonably well-known right wing websites that are taking a stand in favor of the militarization of police forces, please feel free to post a link.
Bet you can’t. Post on National Review, American Spectator, or even Free Republic -against- militarized cops, and I guarantee you will get likes and upvotes.
what sense organ did you use to ‘feel’ that i was ideological, precisely?
Sound? Taste? Gut? Please do go on victor, with your character based thinking and trumping fact with feeling.
Also - which people used extremely violent slogans? The ones teargassing and manhandling the press? Or the heavily armed crowd?
But those guys will like anything as soon as it looks like the winning side.
Call in the national guard to disarm the police. The police should not have any military style weapons, uniforms, or equipment. The police are civilians.
Which is funny because Ron and Rand want more power given to these locals and for the feds to be powerless to protect citizens against them. Who is going to investigate and prosecute crimes committed by local and state police? I don’t see the FBI or any other federal police force shooting rubber bullets at protestors or arresting journalists in Ferguson. It’s the small government closest to the people that’s doing it rather than the federal government who the Pauls of the world believe to be the root of all evil.
Yep, this time it is, but it wasn’t always the case. The problem is not the level of authority that is ordering it - it’s that it’s a wholly vicious response to a protest that kicked this whole thing off. Policing in a majority-black city is hard, especially when almost all the cops are white. It creates a very easy ‘us vs. them’ mentality, and it’s something that a lot of the “libertarians” in government won’t stop. Because their most ardent supporters are, frankly, racist fucks, and more like the cops running around in tactical fetish gear firing stun grenades at grandmothers.
And yet, are those same folks opposed to the militarization of police forces standing up now and saying this is overkill in Ferguson? My impression is: they are opposed to the militarization of local police only when it fits their narrow political aims. Armored police vehicles and heavily armed cops showing up at the Bundy ranch in NV. = BAD. Heavily armed cops rounding up immigrants along the TX border, quashing Occupy protests, or peaceful marches in Ferguson MO = GOOD.
One of the first Facebook posts I saw about this whole thing was from a Libertarian sharing a Rand Paul post. It was a picture of four white vigilantes with rifles standing in front of a store “protecting” it from looters and the slogan “more guns less crime.” Not one peep about police excess or (local) government-perpetrated violence, just “we need guns to protect ourselves from scary black people.”
One of many disgusting facets about this whole thing. Everyone seems to think they’re the hero of this story.
Okay, i have a question: Why does everytime something of importance happens in america, a single town/state at the most reacts, and the rest of the country watches on the tv? Why isn’t the rest of the country up in arms? The amount of bullshit in this is just jaw dropping. Why are you NOT protesting cross country? Is the division of states so strong, culturally, that they are seen as “others”?
What would be the police response to someone sitting on their own lawn pointing a sniper rifle at the police?
It is possible to be against murder AND be a looter at the same time. One does not cancel out the other.
No one cares about you on the Internet. No one cares about whether you support the protest or do not. You are not under attack because for anyone online to do so would require an iota of concentrated focus, a personal investment in who you are as a discrete person. You are a symbol, a representation of some kind of ideological position. You do not matter. Your words do not matter. Your blustering and your indignation are motes of dust in a tornado. Your condemnation or approval are irrelevant. Nothing you say here affects the outcome of anything else. The only thing at stake here for you is your own self-image. This exists entirely in your own conscious brain. No one else is privy to that, and no one else gives one sweet damn about it. No one will nurture it, no one will account for it, no one will preserve it. You will be transformed into a representation of something. Your words will become symbolic of a position, of an aggregation of political views. This aggregate will either stand or not stand. It will be praised or derided, always in the service of the mind-state and self-image of your presumed benefactors or detractors. You are not important enough to have enemies. Those you perceive as enemies exist only for themselves. Welcome to the Internet.
Er? Did you mean to reply to me? I’m sorry if I gave you the impression I was attacking you or implying that you were a police apologist (I don’t think, if you read my comment, that I was doing either of those things, though). I was just taking issue with your assertion that the looting was “directly relevant to the behavior of the police.” There’s enough of a disconnect, both spatially and temporally, between the looting and both the protests and police response that it’s not as relevant as it might appear. (So simply reporting that there was looting becomes somewhat misleading - it requires a longer, more nuanced article to get into the details.)
We got to nip this shit in the bud, Andy! Nip it in the bud!
