I don’t think that works if it was your idea.
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Glitch, I am none of those things. I have always taken my civic duty very seriously, and voted (never missed a presidential election), hit most others, except for school elections, but I don’t have kids. I have voted for different parties based on who I thought had the best message or who who lead more responsibly. But yes, now even I am jaded. If you want to start a movement for a viable third party candidate who has more to offer than the same ol’, please let me know.
* Editing to add that by “rigged”, I mean the fix is in for favors by the big money who paid for the campaign. Voting either side, it’s inescapable. It comes down to which way you have to hold your nose from the stench less.
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I would have never voted for the magnitude of NSA, had that been asked. I would have voted for campaign finance and lobbying reform, but I was never asked. Some of the most important issues are completely out of the voters’ hands.
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"I’ll buy you a diamond ring my friend
If it makes you feel all right "
…
On the other hand, the opposite attitude lets the real villains get away with anything as long as they act through disposable pawns and throw one to the mob whenever things get hot. See: all the American prison camp abuse scandals, where a bunch of prison guards got pilloried and a bunch of generals said “gosh, I just had no idea, how could I possibly be responsible for the actions of my subordinates.”
The pawns should be punished too, but we can’t stop there. That’s exactly what they want us to do–accept a single sacrificial “rogue” and never look any further.
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So don’t adopt the opposite attitude, just adopt both(with a strong bias toward bargaining with peons if and only if they flip on those who ‘just gave’ those orders that they were ‘just following’, since the higher up the food chain you can get, the better).
I’m certainly sympathetic to the notion that hitting as high as possible, as hard as possible, is more valuable than picking off flunkies; but I don’t see any reason why flunkies should be exempt (especially in situations, like this one, where the power of the people who are giving orders over the flunkies just isn’t all that great. Is a campus cop going to get a military tribunal and firing squad for insubordination? Not likely. Would Pike even have been fired or seriously disciplined for adopting a less spraytastic approach? Maybe, quite probably not.)
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Whenever this story is reported, it’s rarely mentioned that the protestors had surrounded the police officers and would not let the police officers leave the campus. Can you still call it a “peaceful protest” when the protestors start taking hostages?
There are so many things [quote=“NobodyMan, post:47, topic:12736”]
Can you still call it a “peaceful protest” when the protestors start taking hostages?
[/quote]Yeah, that poor officer really looks like he was fearing for his life.
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Yeah! Just look at them sitting there, violently. Did you wash out of campus cop school?
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Drat, you got me. My “cover” was a person thinks sometimes things are not 100% black-and-white. But there’s no fooling you. I just hope one day I will be allowed back into “campus cop school”.
edit: I’ll also add that “Campus Cop School” was the working title for my killer one-person musical, but you’ve ruined that too.
Level of fear is irrelevant. If a group of people surround you and refuse to let you leave, what should we call it?
Level of fear is extremely relevant: it’s (most, not all fear is well-calibrated) of what separates ‘empty bluster’ from ‘getting kidnapped’ and everything in between…
If the plausibility of the refusal is low, it’s operationally irrelevant, mere verbal abuse. If the plausibility of the refusal is sufficiently high, it might actually amount to a threat.
Given that Officer Pike is wasting his limited supply of chemical munitions on leisurely watering the seated protesters, rather than, y’know, trying to break through the hostile perimeter of hostage-taking student radicals, I’m going with the theory of the perceived threat level being pretty low.
In the hypothetical universe where all statements are evaluated without ambiguity or context, all refusals might be created equal(though they still wouldn’t apply universally; but only to the people making them, and their allies); but here, a statement’s relevance is pretty closely tied to the perceived force backing it. (Particularly on campus, where getting shitfaced as often as possible counts as a lifestyle choice, cops should have ample experience dealing with mostly-harmless; but mouthy, characters, though the same skill is useful throughout life).
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“Man, look at that guy go, I’ve never seen Pam sprayed so evenly onto the baking sheets, how does he, heeeyyyyy, wait a minute…”
-fellow Cinnabon employees
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what should we call it?
we could call it “nothing like what occurs in the video of the event”
i kind of like the ring of that…
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Based on the page at the DOJ, use of force is justified when it helps accomplish some legitimate police activity. But other than that it’s pretty vague. At some point this officer was probably told that pepper spray and tear gas can be used to disperse a crowd.
But Jesus. Those kids are just sitting there. I really think his whole purpose was to hurt them, so that they would know he’s boss.
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Let’s assume you’re correct. (I’d like a text source if you have one; that video is a bit long.)
Why, then, did he spray the group sitting on the ground with their arms linked refusing to move, instead of the ones who were surrounding him and holding him hostage?
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Are we talking about the office? Because the picture shows that he could have walked around them.
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Kettling?
If they’re patient and don’t cause any trouble, the officers should be allowed to go as soon as it’s safe.
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i’m sending him throat cancer…
(I’d like a text source if you have one; that video is a bit long)
Let me get this straight: you want to rely on a written description because you can’t be bothered to view it actually happening. This is an… interesting application of logic.
