Human rights aren’t up for debate.
And go read a history book instead of falling back on those same failing liberal centrist talking points.
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Can’t we meet those calling for military riot control halfway? Let’s hear them out – what’s the worst that could happen? /zentrum
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It’s been awhile, but I’m going to say this again:
We are incredibly lucky to have a larger-than-average contingent of members who identify as female here on the BBS. They, in ways not altogether dissimilar from current events, face bigotry just by choosing to reveal their gender online.
When they speak up to let you know that your actions are crossing a line, please listen. They, too, put up with both casual misogyny and outright bigotry in their personal, professional, and especially online worlds. Please be sensitive and respectful to your fellow members with this in mind.
Thank you.
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The whole idea that you have to be a fucking angel to deserve not being shot by the police or military needs to die in a fucking fire. As does the idea that living in a democratic society means that EVERYTHING is up for some debate. Well, no. It shouldn’t be. We have laws and a constitutional framework for a reason, and it should be amended and strengthened to give us a social contract that has a baseline of rights that can’t be infringed upon if we once again find ourselves with a wannabe fascist dictator in the white house and bootlickers in our congress. Anything that violates our right of free speech, freedom of religion (and from religion), right to bodily autonomy, right to health care and housing, and education, right to justice, etc, has got to go. There is NEVER a time when the police escalating protests should be acceptable, which is what has been happening in these protests. there is also evidence of people infiltrating the riots to cause trouble, and absolutely some causing trouble just cause it, maybe they want new sneaks or a TV, but a man was killed after over 8 minutes of torture and this is not an unusual occurence in our country. This level of brutality against minorities most especially happens day in and day out, and I don’t see Cotton or any of the people here defending this statement as partisan politics interested in bringing out the military to end that shit… NONE of that justifies bringing out the military like an occupying force.
I think this video Trevor Noah did gets at a lot of this. He talks a bit about the social contract, and how that has not been held up FOR black people in America, so why the hell should they give a shit about that social contract that has never given them the rights that they should have. King was right that a riot is the language of the unheard. But it’s also the language of a people who have no reason to buy into a society that consistently treats them as second class citizens with far less rights than those of us with white skin and some money in our bank accounts…
We have it completely back wards when we say that if these protestors acted like “good people” they’d get treated as such - we in fact KNOW that is not the case, history and current events tell us that. But the reality is that too many people get treated like people with no rights or value to society, so why the hell should they buy into this society?
We MUST have a human centered approach to governance. We do not have that now. And Cotton and his ilk are the worst of that. Not a damn thing any of us would say to him would move him one iota from his authoritarian position, because he does not believe that everyone should have the same rights as rich white men.
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Seems to me we’re running up against Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance again:
I’d argue that using military forces against peaceful civilian protest is a fascist move. I think many of us would agree that speech advocating blatantly fascist policies isn’t something that deserves a voice anywhere, let alone in the pages of what is, right or wrong, one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country.
It’s all well and good to talk about giving a voice to “both sides,” but we’re talking about something that actively advocates the murder of American citizens for their inherent right to protest. In publishing Cotton’s excrescence essay, the NYT has granted the concept a certain degree of legitimacy, and like you, I’m horrified at it. It’s not unfair to call out the NYT for what they choose to print-- they can publish what they please, but those choices carry consequences.
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Of course they literally understand the threat. What they don’t understand is the larger implication of publishing that piece.
They are basically gambling that readers will judge the author negatively for it. The problem, in a nutshell, is that by failing to explicitly denounce this threat, they are implicitly condoning it.
It’s as if their thought process was: “Hey, this guy wrote something that condones brutality and which would only exacerbate the violence against innocent Americans and the press. Let’s publish it! Even better, let’s not denounce it!”
If the press doesn’t stand with its citizens against brutality, we’ll all just be lined up against the wall even faster.
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That’s OUR right to do so, of course, under the first amendment. None of that equals wishing for an echo chamber. 
How that’s suddenly a controversial position or living in a political echo chamber, I don’t know… It’s not.
A good book on how an echo chamber is made is Eric Gordy’s The Culture of Power in Serbia:
The key take away from our discussion here from this is that Milosevic deployed the language of martyrdom of the Serbian people, as did Tudjman in Croatia, and they used that to silence alternative voices (which, for a socialist state, was relatively plentiful compared to other places). The language both men used are very similar to the kind of things that Trump has been saying, to what Cotton is saying here. I kind of wonder if the first lady refused to smile in that photo the other day, because she remembers the wars and how they went down (even though Slovenia got out). She actually looked even more dour than she normally does.
Could be that they don’t. Plenty of people have for the last 3 or so years expressed disdain for the idea that this president could bring down what American democratic norms that do exist. Even right now, people aren’t believing that these sorts of things can lead to destructive civil wars or camps or mass death. But also, they see backlash from conservatives as a bigger threat maybe than they do authoritarianism. Plenty of people believe that in such a situation, they will be unique and be saved from having their rights stripped away…
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“Send in the clowns troops,
Don’t bother, they’re here”
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Put this in the other topic as well.
That last sentence. It sounds like resignation to me.
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As a non-American I don’t see the problem with US troops on US streets.
After all, you’re always telling the rest of the world that your troops are just spreading peace and democracy, and that it’s for our own good. Why wouldn’t you want that at home as well?
Why not just sit back, and let them win over your Hearts and Minds? Why are you struggling, they’re just bringing you the same peaceful democracy that they brought to Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea…
(/s, but only barely).
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I think it works better when the rope is not stretchy.
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You might want to pop your own bubble. Your appeasement at this time is sickening.
The NYT buble isn’t about to pop, it’s being merged in to the far right bubble, as was the Zentrum bubble in the 1930s.
As for echo-chambers, have you ever seen a non-sectarian left wing space online? Liberals, SocDems, DemSocs, Marxists, Anarchists and Tankies all disagreeing about what to do, and some of those disagreements have deep roots from IRL. Then something like this happens and we all come together despite our disagreements and distrust. That is not a bubble or an echo-chamber despite what the zentrum think.
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“It couldn’t happen here!”
And yet it does, every single time.
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If you really are genuine about hearing all sides then watch this, and I mean pay attention to it, no doing anything else for the hour that it is playing.
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Did he volunteer Little Rock, AK for the first deployment of Protest Surpressing Military Forces? I like the NYT but not enough to subscribe. Nevermind, They’ve already been through it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine The bastards.
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For me a better comparison would be that the NYT would be justified in publishing this kind of murderous shit as “balance” if they also published op-eds from Al Qaeda when they discussed the middle East.
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Publish them both at once.
To paraphrase Bill Hicks;
“Hey, it’s one guy with both puppets!”
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