‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
-Lewis Carroll
If you look up “violence” in any dictionary you care to name, you will see that you are the one using the non-standard definition.
That’s fine, I can agree to use non-standard terminology for the sake of argument. The problem here is that you are using rhetorical tricks to try to justify using physical violence to combat figurative violence.
Sorry, even if you want to call figurative violence “violence”, you’re still not justified in answering it with physical violence. If you want to combat mean jokes with more mean jokes, then I would find it hard to fault you morally. If you want to answer it with punches or broken windows, then you are on the wrong side and I will oppose you.
These are just the top three results for “trump protest violence”. I can easily keep finding these all day, but it’s boring so you can do your own research from here on out.
A good question to ask yourself might be: are you trying to convince other people that the left isn’t violent, or are you trying to convince yourself?
Here is you justifying violence from the left:
Aaaaand:
It’s not a tactic nor a derail. @Enkita is literally, objectively arguing that the left is justified in initiating violence against the right. It’s basically impossible to argue against that without at least mentioning the “left/right” dichotomy.
If you think @Enkita is wrong, then I encourage you to call out their arguments as wrong. If you rebut my counterarguments, though, it makes it seem like you agree with @Enkita.
And America has a long history of such violence. David Duke, Lenny Bruce, George Lincoln Rockwell, Andrew Dice Clay, Don Rickles…the list goes on and on.
But you’re still focusing on essentially one moment in time. You need to cast further back to establish a trend. You’re either a fool or just deliberately trying to waste people’s time.
Am I? I thought I was quoting Carrol back to you. You probably don’t want to go down that road with me, by the way. You will not come out looking good. Neither will I. I don’t happen to mind.
Annoying when it’s done to you, is it? Shame, that, You deserve better.
No, I’m focusing on events that happened over the course of a few months. How long back do you want me to establish this trend for?
Did you notice how I was able to respond to you with actual evidence for my statement whereas you responded to me with no evidence, but with namecalling and invective instead?
Nine times out of ten, if you see one person offering evidence for their position while the other person engages in name calling instead, who has the better argument?
I read on FB that there is a group in Berkeley who only exists to break things whenever (their anarchists seems like). So the Dali Lama could be invited and this group would go out to riot just to do it. I agree that the protesters should have kept it peaceful, since this will play in the victim complex the alt-right has.
I’ll have to look into the incident since I’m pretty unfamiliar with it. To the extent that Mosely and his gang marching was a threat of violence, that might justify some pushback, but I can’t see how any of the recent protest violence is justified.
More importantly, it’s ineffective. Apparently liberals don’t want to learn to use violence effectively, but they do want to smash windows and light stuff on fire. That’s a formula for getting the common man to cheer on the police as they smash your movement into the mud.
My apologies, I thought that when you said the left was becoming more violent, you were referencing a larger time frame than just a couple recent months. After all, in the same post that started this little tiff, you referenced the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and North Korea.
Your citations still aren’t great, however. Can you link me to any analysis or even mere data collection that shows that the left has become more violent over the past couple months? These anecdotes merely show that there has been violence, not that it has been increasing.
You’re reminding me of Vietnam. I remember those nightly newscasts that everyone watched together as they were being broadcast. Yeah, it took awhile, but it worked.
but I’m sure the othering rhetoric on display here isn’t anything to do with enabling the ~actual~ violence disempowered minorities - REAL AMERICAN FAMILIES - already actually face.
