[HN Gopher] The Capitol Attack Doesn't Justify Expanding Surveil...
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The Capitol Attack Doesn't Justify Expanding Surveillance
Author : jimmy2020
Score : 274 points
Date : 2021-01-09 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| whatsmyusername wrote:
| They don't need to expand anything. We have all the tools we need
| to identify, arrest, and incarcerate the perpetrators.
|
| Additionally there's ample ability to deplatform them and their
| supporters through the agreements they signed with social media
| companies and payment processors.
|
| The free market won't have trouble deciding that these traitors
| are done with both public life and making enough money to ever
| have to pay taxes again.
|
| Moreover, we are all well within our rights to practice the
| conservative principle of not doing business with those we find
| repugnant.
| smshgl wrote:
| While the events of 1/6 are hardly justifiable, I find it deeply
| troubling that the same crowd who was calling for the abolition
| of the police a few months ago is now earnestly encouraging
| informing on their own friends, family, and neighbors because
| they deserve to be punished and most importantly, humiliated. I
| hardly believe the FBI needs any assistance in locating anyone,
| but I fear this is settling a troubling precedent that has not
| been seen since 20th century Europe.
|
| In the months and years to come, we must try to not forget that
| the government exists solely for the benefit of its constituents,
| not the other way around.
|
| The ruled class, red and blue, does not want freedom from
| oppression, they want to be the oppressors.
| jMyles wrote:
| > I find it deeply troubling that the same crowd who was
| calling for the abolition of the police a few months ago is now
| earnestly encouraging informing on their own friends
|
| Uhhh, is that actually happening?
|
| I think I have my finger pretty firmly on the pulse of one
| center of today's abolitionist movement, in Portland (where I
| was in the streets getting gassed many times this summer), and
| I don't know of anybody who holds the contradictory viewpoint
| you're describing.
|
| I don't think most abolitionists care enough about the Capitol
| in the first place to get enraged about this.
| [deleted]
| betterunix2 wrote:
| No serious person was saying we should abolish the police, that
| is just another lie from the former conservative media (former,
| because there is nothing recognizably conservative about
| trumpism). There are legitimate questions about the use of
| police funding for militarization, and those questions have
| been raised by people all over the political spectrum. There
| are also serious problems with the differences in how the
| police handle calls, patrol work, and arrests in black
| neighborhoods and with black suspects versus white
| neighborhoods. Since the 90s the alarm has been sounded about
| the infiltration of police forces across the country by white
| nationalists and neonazis. Those concerns can be addressed by
| well-planned police reform, which is what people have actually
| been calling for.
|
| As for 20th century Europe, we are already there when armed
| terrorists invade the Capitol in an attempt to, as they
| themselves said, overthrow the government.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| I guess a statement like that can always be true depending on
| how you define serious person. But millions of people were
| and are arguing for the strongest possible interpretation of
| "abolish the police".
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
| abol...
|
| I have to admit I find it pretty disheartening that
| mainstream liberals are for the most part just as unwilling
| to take a critical look at the most extreme, "all cops are
| bad", toppling statues of Abraham Lincoln and burning down
| police stations subset of the left or even acknowledge that
| it exists, as the mainstream republicans have been of
| condemning the trumpism/q-anon alt right.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Do you have a source for "millions of people"?
| cactus2093 wrote:
| This article gives it a funny framing by just brushing it
| off as "few", but claims 15% of Americans support
| abolishing the police
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/22/abolish-
| pol...
|
| 15% of the roughly 200M adults in the US is 30 million
| people.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| That's not what your article says lol. Do you have
| another source for your outlandish claim?
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| My speculation is that the actual phasing means very
| different things to very different people, and thus the
| actual nuance of what people believe in aggregate to be
| useless to discern by their agreement or disagreement
| with singular phrases. For example, "abolishing the
| police, with context that they would be replaced with
| equally strong mutual support systems, social workers,
| mental and physical health workers" could be a vast
| majority of that 15%, or it could be the vast minority of
| that 15%. We just don't know.
| Aunche wrote:
| Social workers aren't going to stop people from breaching
| the Capitol.
| notahacker wrote:
| No, but it's pretty normal to think that the people
| attending domestic incidents to identify whether a crime
| has committed and the people guarding the legislature
| should have different rules of engagement, training and
| quite possibly uniforms.
|
| I'm the first person to argue that 'defund the police'
| was a terrible slogan to adopt, but that's precisely
| because everyone jumps to saying "but we don't actually
| mean have no publicly subsidised law enforcement". Even
| if the rafts of related reform proposals are still far
| too idealistic for the real world, it's not a position
| comparable to the Q faithful having the numbers to win
| primaries.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| The article also stated that there may have been problems
| with the poll, like not differentiating between total
| elimination and partially dismantling police departments.
|
| _If presented as total elimination of police
| departments, the survey might have missed support for
| more nuanced calls to dismantle police, said Phillip
| Atiba Goff, co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity.
| "One notion of abolition is the need for discontinuity
| from the violent and racist past of law enforcement," he
| said._
| cactus2093 wrote:
| The way I read it that quote is saying the 15% would be
| higher if you included both the people who want to
| abolish and those who want more moderate reform.
|
| It's not saying that it already includes both groups.
| akiselev wrote:
| Many people are saying it was a Twitter user named
| "MillionsOfPeople"
| runamok wrote:
| The clarion call was "defund the police" not "abolish the
| police". Some people believe these are are synonymous but
| IMO most agree "defund" means things like de-militarize and
| add social workers to deal with things like mental health
| and quality of life issues instead of sending undertrained
| people with guns... I'd add "prevent them profiting from
| things like property seizures".
|
| Compare the two phrases in google trends for example. https
| ://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=defund%20the%20po...
|
| At the peak in mid-June it was a 100:7 ratio.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| You know what the difference is? Those are _fringe_
| elements of left wing politics who get little to no
| endorsement from anyone with any actual power, and who
| remain mostly irrelevant in Democratic party politics.
| Whereas on Wednesday, you had the most powerful Republican
| tell a violent mob to go to the Capitol and "convince" the
| "weak" Republicans to change their minds. His lawyer, who
| is one of the prominent faces in the Trump media ecosystem,
| told them this will be "trial by combat." A Republican
| Senator showed an affirmative gesture to that very crowd on
| his way into the Capitol.
|
| Stop trying to "both sides" this, because this is not a
| "both sides are just as bad" situation. We just saw the top
| level leadership of a major national party endorse and
| praise a terrorist mob that tried to overthrow the US
| government. The president literally said he "loved" those
| people when he told them to go home. That is problematic on
| a completely different level from anything that has
| happened on the left.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| Did I say anywhere that both sides are just as bad? Did I
| say the things the left does are as bad as starting an
| insurrection? I did not, and in fact I think the far
| right is much worse. That doesn't mean there aren't parts
| of the left that are also in the wrong about certain
| things. And no it's not just a tiny part of the left.
|
| But why are you so quick to get so defensive? Why can
| nobody openly acknowledge their own side's faults?
|
| Going back to the topic at hand about abolishing the
| police, I don't understand why I never hear anybody say
| "yeah you're right, abolish the police is a bad way to
| say it. Here are the things we actually want. Wr should
| tweak the messaging to make it more clear". Everyone is
| so insistent on doubling down on the abolish/defund
| language. And if someone doesn't understand that this is
| now just a code for a more nuanced agenda, then we'll
| extend our outrage to them too!
| kodah wrote:
| If we make the right own their extremists in terms of
| rhetoric, action, and ideology then I think the same
| standard is appropriate for the left. The only people
| that complain about "both sides" points are people who
| can't introspect their own ideologies.
|
| All you've done here is ask that people on the right
| ignore your fringe groups, but would you do the same? Or
| would you do what they're doing and engage in hyperbole
| to make you deal with them?
|
| Both your parties are junk to me, so I'm happy to keep
| saying "both sides" until you all get your bad behavior
| under control.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Get back to me when the most powerful Democratic
| politicians in the country throw their support behind
| violent extremists. The fringes of left wing politics
| have been kept at the fringe. For the past five years, if
| not longer, the extremist fringe of right wing politics
| has been allowed to enter the mainstream of the
| Republican party. The Republican President has endorsed
| them, encouraged them, praised them, and defended them,
| and the RNC just declared him to be their party's leader
| _after what happened on Wednesday_.
|
| Nobody needs to "make" the right own their extremists
| because they have done so already.
| accented wrote:
| >Get back to me when the most powerful Democratic
| politicians in the country throw their support behind
| violent extremists.
|
| They already do. Barack was training and arming
| "moderate" rebels in the takeover and destruction of
| Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Hillary Clinton was laughing
| when she heard Gaddafi was killed.
| kodah wrote:
| The CHAZ is a good example that was well supported and
| well tolerated, even championed. [0]
|
| > On June 18, a volunteer medic intervened during a
| sexual assault in a tent in the occupied park area; the
| alleged perpetrator was arrested.[133] NPR reported that
| day, "Nobody inside the protest zone thinks a police
| return would end peacefully. Small teams of armed anti-
| fascists are also present, self-proclaimed community
| defense forces who say they're ready to fight if needed
| but that de-escalation is preferred."
|
| Spenser Rapone, who attempted to infiltrate the US
| Military, received notable support and has gone on to be
| a speaker at events [1][2]
|
| This gives a better spectrum picture of what's going on
| [3] and this statement sums it up fairly well:
|
| > According to Brian Levin, director of the Center for
| the Study of Hate and Extremism at the California State
| University, if Reinoehl is implicated in the case, "it
| would mark the first time in recent years that an antifa
| supporter has been charged with homicide" as "hard-left
| violence has generally been less fatal and more directed
| towards property, racists and to a lesser extent police
| and journalists" which is unlike "the white supremacist
| and the far right, which glorifies mass violence by
| loners and small cells against minorities and enemies".
| Gary LaFree, chairman of the University of Maryland's
| criminology department, stated that "the case could
| potentially be included in the university's Global
| Terrorism Database as the first act of terror linked to
| antifa".
|
| Left-wing radicalist groups tend to be self-organizing
| cells which makes them hard to track, much like the group
| Anonymous from back in the early days of the internet.
| This has precedent through history as well. [4]
|
| The way your message and my message differ is that I'm
| not going to provide rhetorical cover fire for either of
| your groups. They're both disgusting and you both need to
| own them, because you all provided the foundation or lack
| of accountability that gave them material presence and
| impact.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous
| _Zone#D...
|
| [1] https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-
| army/2018/06/19/commie-c...
|
| [2] https://www.ncnewsonline.com/news/local-man-west-
| point-grad-...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controvers
| ies_dur...
|
| [4] https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-
| burrough/
| karaterobot wrote:
| Wait, are we already rewriting history to eliminate the idea
| that, for months last summer, many people actually did want
| to abolish the police?
|
| Granted, a lot of that got walked back later, but it did
| happen. I live close enough to the CHOP that you can't really
| make me believe there wasn't an huge, loud, violent movement
| that unambiguously wanted to get rid of cops, period.
|
| As far as serious people (true Scotsmen) go, I guess you're
| defining them as rational, learned experts. But I would urge
| you to at least pay attention to what crazed maniacs think
| too, since it turns out they can do some damage if you ignore
| them long enough.
| mopsi wrote:
| > _No serious person was saying we should abolish the police,
| that is just another lie from the former conservative media_
|
| "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police" by Mariame Kaba.
| New York Times, 2020-06-12,
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
| abol...
| tstrimple wrote:
| Have you ever noticed that when conservatives give an
| example of what "the other side" believes, they always pick
| fringe opinion pieces best suited to Tumblr. When liberals
| call out dangerous rhetoric, it's from major conservative
| media outlets and elected officials? One party is electing
| and promoting the craziest elements of their base. Just
| one.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Yea, the President and r Senators fomenting insurrection
| and someone no one has heard of writing an opinion piece
| are exactly the same.
| glasss wrote:
| From the same article:
|
| >But don't get me wrong. We are not abandoning our
| communities to violence. We don't want to just close police
| departments. We want to make them obsolete.
|
| Later in the article:
|
| >What would the country look like if it had billions of
| extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for
| all?
|
| Even Kaba, who has been advocating for the abolishment of
| police and prison for a long time, doesn't just want these
| establishments gone. She wants all of the funding and
| resources currently budgeted for these establishments to go
| towards resolving the root cause of most violent crimes.
|
| The spin that my conservative relatives were told by Tucker
| Carlson and friends was that "these people want anarchy and
| free reign to commit crimes" (paraphrasing). While
| anecdotal, it does seem that conservative media
| conveniently forgot to mention the rest of the argument to
| my relatives.
| Aunche wrote:
| Just like how some view Trump as dog-whistling support
| for the riots, even though semantically he's supporting
| their right to protest a fair election. Carlson views
| reallocating funding for the police to social services as
| dog whistling support for violent crimes.
|
| 160 years ago, Lincoln and Douglas were able to hold
| civil debates about slavery, which gave Lincoln the
| popularity he needed to win the presidency. I'm not sure
| how public discourse has decayed so significantly when
| we're more educated than ever.
| geitir wrote:
| Because everyone has a platform through the internet
| accented wrote:
| Hey you mentioned the T-word without a disclaimer that
| you dont support him. Downvotes for you.
| didibus wrote:
| Reading the article it doesn't exactly sound like
| abolishing the police in the sense that we revert to chaos
| and anarchy. It sounds more like what else could you do
| with all the money going to the police now, which could
| also reduce crime. And it seems the argument is that the
| police is designed to react to crime as it happen, while
| there might be ways that can stop the crime from happening
| in the first place, like better education, more housing, or
| who knows what else.
|
| I think this is the key takeaway from the opinion piece:
|
| > As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea
| that we solve problems by policing and caging people that
| many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the
| police as solutions to violence and harm.
|
| I find it an interesting idea to be honest. I don't know
| that I'm convinced one way or the other, but it definitely
| seems an interesting area for research and innovation. We
| innovate solutions to all kind of problems, it seems it has
| been a while since we've tried to innovate solutions around
| crime reduction and prevention.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| I think part of the reason we allow states and cities to
| operate with their own governments is just so that they
| can explore, research, and innovate on a societal level.
| Bringing politics nationally like has been happening in
| the USA stifles innovation and therefore could make it
| harder to find better strategies to handle nonviolent
| crimes.
|
| (This is not a disagreement, this is mostly conversing on
| the nuances of exploring the policy given our current
| political setting. )
| didibus wrote:
| I think you make a good point, the internet has kind of
| brought people together to debate and discuss issues when
| their personal contexts are very different. This often
| leads to a kind of stalemate in the debates.
|
| And like you say, nobody is allowed to be wrong or fail
| in politics anymore, which means we're not allowed to
| experiment at the local or regional level, or to rollback
| policies, or just have any kind of rational
| retrospective. Nope, now it's all ideological, like
| religion, you can't possibly push a policy that failed,
| or have a bad idea. That just means you're weak and shall
| be casted away for the better sharlatan to take your
| place, he is never wrong, if you doubt how right he is,
| you shall be jailed or mocked, if his policies don't
| work, we shall endure them and believe in them even
| harder.
| kevindong wrote:
| That's an opinion piece.
|
| > By Mariame Kaba
|
| > Ms. Kaba is an organizer against criminalization.
| [deleted]
| mwfunk wrote:
| This is the thing: you can always tell when people come
| from utterly useless propaganda bubbles by 2 huge red
| flags:
|
| (1) They don't understand the difference between
| editorial content and reporting, because the media
| outlets they follow do their best to blur the
| distinction, all the way down to not even making a
| distinction organizationally or professionally, and
| making it seem like more legitimate sources of
| information don't make that distinction either. So the
| biggest red flag is that they don't even realize that
| there are professional standards and practices for
| keeping those things separate, and they don't understand
| things like fact checking or there being burdens of proof
| applied before something considered news reporting is
| published. To them, editorial content and news reporting
| are the same thing, with the same minimal burden of
| proof, because those are the nonexistent standards of
| literally every source of "information" they have.
|
| (2) They think that when a media outlet voluntarily
| issues corrections (not from a lawsuit or threat of a
| lawsuit), that it's a sign that that outlet is less
| reliable than the places they go that never ever issue
| corrections unless legally forced to. The reality is
| completely flipped around, but that's their mentality.
| Culturally, that dovetails with "never admit being wrong"
| and "never apologize", which are ideals that resonate
| REALLY REALLY hard with people in these propaganda
| bubbles. The lack of accountability makes them trust
| untrustworthy sources even more, not less. Accountability
| makes them trust trustworthy sources less, not more.
|
| I would add (3), how they react if they find out that
| something they themselves put out there isn't true. Watch
| what happens if they find out something they posted
| objectively isn't true. Instead of retracting it, they'll
| say something like, "well it doesn't matter, the meaning
| of the message is the same", or "well it doesn't matter
| the fake news media does it all the time". Which is the
| exact same thing that pathological liars and con artists
| say when their lies are exposed- that everyone does it,
| and maybe even that they are victims of hypocrites for
| being called out on it, because they assume the people
| calling them out surely lie about stuff all the time too.
| They're always looking for excuses to do worse, not
| better, and for excuses to think of themselves as
| victims, and for any possible reason to lower the bar for
| themselves rather than raise it for everyone.
| blockmarker wrote:
| When editorials only ever include the beliefs of the
| left, and even moderate republican beliefs are beyond the
| pale and mean that those responsible for publishing them
| are fired, it is obvious to all not willfully blind that
| editorials mean endorsement.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| That's an opinion piece from a nobody.
| snomad wrote:
| CHAZ and and the Minneapolis Autonomous Zone indicate it was
| far more serious then your post indicates.
|
| On Tuesday night, a cop killed a man in Modesto - it was the
| _4th_ person killed by the same cop [1]. As you say, their
| are serious questions to ask about the police force and
| militarization. However, the racist /right wing thing is far
| too reductionary and fails to capture lack of proper
| training, lack of proper post-shooting responses, etc.
|
| 1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/ActualPublicFreakouts/comments/k
| rng...
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Since the 90s the alarm has been sounded about the
| infiltration of police forces across the country by white
| nationalists and neonazis.
|
| IIRC, there have been big scandals about that in Germany
| recently. The neonazis have been infiltrating the military
| there, too, to the point where they had to disband an
| _entire_ special forces unit, because it was too far gone to
| be cleaned up.
|
| Honestly, the liberal fixation on gun control seems a really
| short sighted to me, given that kind of infiltration and the
| general right-leaning nature of law enforcement and the
| military [1]. It seems far more likely to me that liberals
| (and minorities) would someday need to rise up against an
| oppressive government than conservatives would be, even
| though conservatives like to fantasize about that kind of
| thing more.
|
| [1] Proven very clearly by the events in Kenosha: police shot
| an unarmed black man in the back, but didn't even stop an
| armed white kid who just shot three people.
| Xylakant wrote:
| > The neonazis have been infiltrating the military there,
| too, to the point where they had to disband an entire
| special forces unit, because it was too far gone to be
| cleaned up.
|
| I think you're talking about the KSK (Kommando
| Spezialkrafte, Special Forces) and it was only partially
| dismantled. Still, that's bad enough, obviously.
|
| https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/ksk-aufloesung-
| umstru...
| sokoloff wrote:
| > the events in Kenosha: police shot an unarmed black man
| in the back
|
| I believe it's been established as fact that Jacob Blake
| was armed with a knife when he was shot. I'm not drawing
| any conclusion about the justification [not comparison],
| but he was not "unarmed".
|
| https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/new-audio-shares-the-
| mo...
| ardy42 wrote:
| > I believe it's been established as fact that Jacob
| Blake was armed with a knife when he was shot. I'm not
| drawing any conclusion about the justification [not
| comparison], but he was not "unarmed".
|
| I stand corrected, though it doesn't detract any from my
| overall point.
|
| The shooting was still BS:
|
| > Blake details returning to his SUV while in possession
| of the knife. It was that knife that Sheskey said he saw
| moments before the DA said Sheskey followed his training
| and began firing until there was no longer a threat.
| Sheskey shot Blake seven times, paralyzing the 27-year-
| old father of three.
|
| I don't think someone holding a knife and _walking away_
| from you can be properly categorized as an actual
| "threat."
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Felony warrant for sexual assault at the address of the
| woman who called in the domestic disturbance, kid in the
| car, Blake has said "I'm taking the kid and I'm taking
| the car". They've tried to physically restrain him, but
| he is stronger than them, they've tried to taser him but
| he ripped the wires out. He's got a knife and he's trying
| to get in the car that the kid is in.
|
| "P.O. Sheskey stated 'Blake, for the first time, showed
| intent to harm by driving the knife towards his (P.O.
| Sheskey's) torso.' P.O. Arenas also said, 'at that
| moment, he feared the armed subject (Blake) was about to
| stab P.O. Sheskey.' He (P.O. Arenas) would have tried to
| stop Blake's advances with the knife, but 'he did not
| have a clear shot due to the positioning of the door.'
| P.O. Sheskey 'feared that Blake was going to stab him,
| and he could not retreat because the child could be
| harmed, taken hostage, or abducted by Blake.' 'For these
| reasons, he discharged his firearm towards Jacob Blake.'
| He stated that he later determined that he shot (7) shots
| and did not stop until Blake dropped the knife."
|
| That's from the independent evaluation at https://www.ken
| oshacounty.org/DocumentCenter/View/11830/Use-..., video
| at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-
| police-keno....
|
| I'm so glad I have a desk job.
| [deleted]
| hertzrat wrote:
| Lots of people literally were wanting to abolish the police.
| The expression meant something different to almost everybody
| who said it. A city unanimously voted to do it[1]
|
| [1] https://nypost.com/2020/06/26/minneapolis-city-council-
| appro...
| ABeeSea wrote:
| > The suggested department would consist of peace officers
|
| So there would still be officers, but the department would
| be rebuilt from the ground up. Sounds like a great idea.
| Some departments can't be fixed and have to be rebuilt.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| i guess the seattle and minneapolis city councils are not
| serious people then.
| mlyle wrote:
| In both cases they are working to replace the existing
| department with a new department with a large contingent of
| peace officers-- to tear down what's there and replace it
| with something new.
| jMyles wrote:
| > No serious person was saying we should abolish the police
|
| I don't think any serious person is saying that "no serious
| person was saying we should abolish the police."
|
| Abolitionism has been a strong movement, close to the core of
| American values of liberty, since the beginning of
| professional police and the Charleston Watch, before the
| civil war.
|
| I am a serious person. And I do not believe that the
| institution of the police is the best way for a nation whose
| laws are based on the commonlaw tradition to establish
| justice or promote safety. Especially in 2020, when there are
| cameras everywhere and the capacity to report emergencies at
| lightspeed, I think that continuing to fund and empower this
| particular experiment is irresponsible.
| neogodless wrote:
| There is a recurring theme in thin arguments where it is argued
| that "the same people" argue two different, apparently
| contrasting things (without evidence.)
|
| The reality is that there are _some_ groupings of people with
| contradictory beliefs, but more realistically, each individual
| has a belief of each issue somewhere on a spectrum.
| Polarization has further grouped issues together, and
| attributed each stance as one side or the other, but this is
| not a useful way to explore issues or try to find the right
| balance or compromise for individual issues.
|
| You might be left-wing and also support a demilitarization of
| law enforcement, especially when you look at uneven responses
| to protests[0], but political affiliation is not nearly as
| consistent as that just based on race alone[1], despite the
| greater risk of lethal force being applied when you have black
| skin[2].
|
| And if you are right-wing _and_ support overrunning the Capitol
| and disrupting the election process, you believe what was done
| was _right_ and a fight against a corrupt and oppressive
| government. But wherever you fall on the political spectrum, if
| you believe that the individuals broke the law by forcefully
| entering the Capitol, you may find it dutiful to respond to
| requests from the FBI to aide in identifying those individuals
| (particularly if you believe this behavior attacks an important
| component of elected representative democracy.)
|
| What keeps surprising me, though, is the failure to see
| President Donald Trump as an oppressor. He labels roughly half
| of his own citizens as enemies, discredits alternative sources
| of information (basically anyone that disagrees with him);
| accepting that behavior is a dangerous way to choose your
| political leaders. You should strive to unite the citizens, and
| your government should not be the strongest, loudest voice you
| listen to, because you need checks and balances against
| government controlled information.
|
| [0] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polices-tepid-
| respo...
|
| [1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-two-party-
| syste...
|
| [2]
| https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...
|
| > The finding of elevated risk for Black victims in the Mental
| Health Crisis group suggests two worrisome features of police
| killings: First, training protocols focused solely on mental
| health may need to be redesigned to incorporate issues of
| greater perceptions of threat among Black civilians. Second,
| race may be more salient than other factors in the decision to
| use lethal force on a suspect across circumstances. This is
| particularly worrisome given the additional details of flight
| and threat in killings with less substantial bases for
| reasonableness. In other words, race appears to distinguish
| these killings even after taking into account the additional
| factors that might justify an officer's use of lethal force.
| Police killings, then, are neither race-neutral nor linked to
| specific features of the incident.
| smaddox wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? This is one of the most well reasoned
| and we'll articulated comments I've seen on this topic.
| rconti wrote:
| "Defund the police" doesn't mean what you think it means.
|
| I was glad the police, in this case, showed the restraint to
| not engage in violence due to an unruly crowd who seemed to
| pose no threat to their lives. They showed how it could be
| done, although due to planning failures, they were BADLY under-
| staffed, and it got perilously close to the VP and other
| leaders. Deadly force was only employed as a last resort.
|
| And I fully support snitching on violent criminals.
|
| There are many consistent positions a large number of people
| hold. Trying to make this an "us versus them" by proclaiming in
| your comment that the entirety of "red vs blue" are only out
| for their own interests is only feeding into a narrative of
| complete polarization where there is actually a ton of common
| ground.
| smshgl wrote:
| Unfortunately, it seems all too often we are sorted into red
| or blue containers if we don't choose a side ourselves.
|
| > And I fully support snitching on violent criminals
|
| And when the criminals have all been removed, the police will
| give back their power? Or will they create more? They don't
| need your help to arrest anyone, they do need your help to
| not question their methods.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Defund the police" (in general) doesn't mean "don't stop any
| crimes".
|
| It means things like "maybe we don't need armed people to give
| tickets to drivers with a busted headlight" and "if we put more
| funds into mental health crisis teams we won't have to send as
| many cops to violent incidents".
|
| There are full-on police abolitionists, but they're far fewer
| in number.
| smshgl wrote:
| Yes, I agree with you. I would also add the 'spirit' of the
| Defund the Police movement was that a lack of oversight
| created a safe environment for bad officers to victimize
| their community.
|
| Now, many of the same champions of this cause are taking on
| the role of the police themselves. Across Reddit, Twitter,
| and elsewhere, people are creating open source documents with
| the names of anyone they believe was at the riot.
|
| Most troubling of all, I am seeing many people openly
| advocating the police should have shot more protesters or
| brutalized them in some manner.
|
| This seems highly contrary to the goals of the movement.
| didibus wrote:
| Haven't you seen the repeated message:
|
| > We're not saying shoot them like you shot us. We're
| saying don't shoot us like you didn't shoot them.
|
| The issue is with the double standard, and that's what's at
| the root of the BLM movement. Honestly I'm surprised that
| some people still haven't managed to understand what's at
| the root of BLM after like all the demonstrations that
| happened around it.
|
| Even the name of the movement: "Black Lives Matters" aka
| "Blacks are not a lower class to be treated more arshly and
| with less humanity"
|
| Which is why when someone says BLM nah ALM, it's absolutely
| missing the point of the movement. Cause how do you reframe
| that: "All people are of equal class"... Ok but black
| people aren't treated equally so like that's not true?
| That's why there are million of black people protesting.
| It's okay to maybe wonder... Wait is it true that black
| people are treated differently? Is it because they are
| black? Or is it more that poor people (happen to often be
| black) and are treated differently? Yes sure that's a
| question one can wonder, but you don't have to go very far
| at least to suspect that whatever it is, in effect, black
| people do get treated differently (be it because they are
| black or because they are poor, or because they're less
| educated, etc.) The why doesn't matter, the different
| treatment does, no matter what, nobody should be treated
| differently.
|
| Sorry for the rant, but it's tiring having to explain these
| basics. Of course left and right can't even have a proper
| conversation around the issue when half the table doesn't
| understand what is the issue to discuss.
|
| And I like to remind people, this isn't just the root of
| the BLM movement, this is literally the root of the United
| States itself. The declaration of independence:
|
| > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
| created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
| certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
| Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these
| rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
| their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That
| whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
| these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to
| abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
| foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
| such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
| their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate
| that Governments long established should not be changed for
| light and transient causes;
| Nursie wrote:
| I haven't seen that.
|
| I have seen many saying black people would have been shot,
| and this is unequal, that doesn't mean they want more shot.
|
| I've also seen many decrying the lack of defence of
| congress. Again, doesn't mean more deaths, just better
| preparation.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Most troubling of all, I am seeing many people openly
| advocating the police should have shot more protesters or
| brutalized them in some manner.
|
| > This seems highly contrary to the goals of the movement.
|
| It is, and most people "in the movement" I've seen are
| saying "hey, this gentleness is how BLM protests should've
| treated, too".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Most troubling of all, I am seeing many people openly
| advocating the police should have shot more protesters or
| brutalized them in some manner.
|
| I've seen lots of people ask questions like "where were the
| tear gas and rubber bullets?", but I think you are missing
| the point of those and other references to the behavior of
| the police during BLM and other protests if you interpret
| them as a call that the violent behavior should have been
| repeated.
|
| They are, in at least most cases, using the restraint shown
| in the attempted coup where top government leaders were
| targeted to highlight what they see as the
| inappropriateness of the violent response in earlier
| protests and the hollowness of law enforcement claims that
| the force used in those earlier events was reasonable,
| necessary, and justified rather than motivated by racial
| and political bias.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| No, there were people also saying that the protestors
| should have been shot. On this very website, IIRC
| (rightly downvoted), but certainly on other platforms.
| daenz wrote:
| >maybe we don't need armed people to give tickets to drivers
| with a busted headlight
|
| There are endless videos of normal cops being executed by
| unhinged drivers who were pulled over for things like "a
| busted headlight." You don't know who you're dealing with,
| how close to the edge some people are, or if they are
| dangerous felons, when you pull them over. If those
| situations were a very real possibility in your daily job,
| would you perform that job unarmed? I wouldn't. Maybe some
| very brave mental health professionals would, for a time,
| until some of them are killed as well, as indiscriminately as
| the police, which is inevitable.
|
| What then? Stop pulling people over altogether, because it's
| not worth risking anybody's life further? Just let people
| speed and drive drunk, or drive with an unsafe vehicle?
|
| When I get this far in discussions with people, it eventually
| comes down to "well dangerous people shouldn't have guns."
| It's a nice thought, naive in my opinion, but regardless, how
| do we deal with the reality of right now until those ideals
| manifest in reality? The reality is that dangerous people
| make regular traffic stops too dangerous for normal people to
| behave in any other way that to exercise extreme caution.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > There are endless videos of cops being executed by
| unhinged drivers who were pulled over for things like "a
| busted headlight."
|
| Frequently, this is because they suspect the cop will find
| they have a warrant or contraband and the stop will proceed
| past a ticket to arrest and felony charges.
|
| Separating the civil and criminal enforcement here makes
| these encounters safer; we can see this in countries where
| traffic cops aren't routinely armed.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| So a traffic stop shouldn't involve a check for
| outstanding warrants?
| krastanov wrote:
| Of course it should not! Traffic stops should not be a
| dragnet.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| OK, so then you're going to have some explaining to do
| when someone with a warrant commits another violent
| crime, and it turns out that the week prior he was pulled
| over for some traffic violation and was let go.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If only we had a similar expectation of "explaining to
| do" when the opposite happens, and an innocent person
| winds up dead because of an armed traffic stop?
|
| Philando Castile serves as a good example.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Well, since there was an investigation, criminal charges,
| and a jury trial, it sounds like it was "explained" as
| much as our system is capable of.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Given that the cop was acquitted of all charges, perhaps
| the system should be capable of more here?
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Maybe so. Neither you nor I were on the jury though. We
| don't just get to ignore a jury decision and impose our
| own personal justice because from the outside it doesn't
| seem fair. There were two blacks on the jury, according
| to what I read on Wikipedia.
| daenz wrote:
| This is a really bad faith response. Truthfully, out of
| all the traffic stops, which do you think happens at a
| higher rate: instances like Philando Castile, or
| instances where someone pulled over has a warrant for a
| violent crime and goes on to commit more violent crime?
| If you have to stop and think about it for an extended
| amount of time, then to me, that suggests you have a
| strong bias in one direction.
| krastanov wrote:
| Harassment by police at traffic stops happens at orders
| of magnitude higher rate than the capture of potentially
| violent criminals with warrants.
|
| And it does not matter: in the US and most civilized
| countries a police officer is supposed to have a
| reasonable suspicion before they start invading someone's
| privacy.
|
| The idea of someone running warrant checks on the basis
| of a broken tail light is antithetical to notions like
| the presumption of innocence and right to privacy.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| > The idea of someone running warrant checks on the basis
| of a broken tail light is antithetical to notions like
| the presumption of innocence and right to privacy.
|
| Hm, there's definitely a line somewhere. I'm with you in
| that I don't think cops should be able to demand ID and
| run checks on random people simply out and about in
| public. Broken tail light? Not sure. Speeding? OK now
| you're breaking the law and arguably creating a public
| safety threat, but probably not going to be arrested.
| DUI? Now you're in misdemeanor territory at least. When
| is it reasonable to check if you're also wanted for
| something else? Maybe when you're booked at the jail?
| krastanov wrote:
| Yes, as a society we have to decide together where to
| place that line. But because of the aforementioned
| reasons it is my strong belief that any such warrant
| checks should be impossible to do by the officer on the
| spot as they have nothing to do with the current stop.
| Checks being done by a clerk at a court or in jail makes
| a lot more sense.
| daenz wrote:
| You have moved the goal post. The parent comments weren't
| talking about "harassment", it was talking about
| unjustifiable murder, like the instance of Philando
| Castile, vs capturing violent criminals with warrants.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The DMV checks for warrants if I go in for a license
| renewal, despite being unarmed. Seems to work OK; if
| someone shows up with a warrant they just call the cops.
|
| Census workers aren't expected to check for warrants,
| because it's not their job; I'm advocating the same for
| things like speeding enforcement.
| krastanov wrote:
| But you can make the same argument in favor or
| warrantless searches, phone call (metadata) dragnets,
| stop and frisk, mass surveillance, etc. You are basically
| making an argument against "the fruit of the poisoned
| tree" doctrine with respect to crime evidence. More
| generally, it is an argument against the 4th and 5th
| ammendements.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are a variety of different opinions on the matter.
|
| Don't check at all. Check, but report without pursuit.
| Some have issues with traffic stops entirely, given the
| racial biases involved in who to pull over. (Demonstrated
| most effectively in this study, where the disparity
| disappears when the sun goes down:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/inside-100-million-
| poli... / https://news.stanford.edu/2020/05/05/veil-
| darkness-reduces-r...)
|
| There's also the fact that the scary "normal cops being
| executed by unhinged drivers" scenario is a vanishingly
| rare scenario. The rate of murders of police officers
| matches roughly the rate in the general population.
| https://www.newsweek.com/it-has-never-been-safer-be-
| cop-3720...
| daenz wrote:
| > The rate of murders of police officers matches roughly
| the rate in the general population.
|
| And they wear body armor, can call for backup, and can
| engage threats with deadly force. I would imagine a job
| with those tactical advantages would have a much much
| lower murder rate than the general population.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Dont persue?
|
| Dude the reason the cat with the warrant hasn't been
| caught is because they dont show up to their known
| residence. They are EVADING. Their home isnt a safe space
| from warrants.
|
| You just effectively nullified the entire reason to have
| a warrant out for someone's arrest, let alone reason for
| bail so someone shows up to court.
|
| And no, it's not safer in the sense they aren't shot.
| Body armor has gotten better and the likelihood of
| surviving a few rounds to the chest has gone up. The
| shootings haven't changed, just the body armor. Get out
| of your sick fantasy world. Better yet, go be a cop to
| help reform. See for yourself before you think you have
| an opinion.
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| > Better yet, go be a cop to help reform. See for
| yourself before you think you have an opinion.
|
| Cops who attempt to turn in bad cops get fucked up by
| other cops, so this is a no-go.
|
| Otherwise I generally agree with your point that not
| checking for warrants has a really bad consequence of
| potentially letting go of people who have warrants out
| for committing heinous, heinous crimes. (Admittedly,
| often times cops have let go of people during traffic
| stops without checking for warrants. Several serial
| killers for example.)
| NoOneNew wrote:
| How do you know to send a social worker or a cop before
| they're identified and checked for warrants? Or do we
| just do 100% unarmed social workers and ask the dude with
| a warrant to kindly wait about 5 to 10 minutes for cops
| to come over to arrest them?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Seems to work in Denver thus far.
|
| https://www.denverpost.com/2020/09/06/denver-star-
| program-me...
|
| > Since its launch June 1, the STAR van has responded to
| more than 350 calls, replacing police in matters that
| don't threaten public safety and are often connected to
| unmet mental or physical needs. The goal is to connect
| people who pose no danger with services and resources
| while freeing up police to respond to other calls. The
| team, which is not armed, has not called police for
| backup, Sailon said.
|
| > The team has responded to an indecent exposure call
| that turned out to be a woman changing clothes in an
| alley because she was unhoused and had no other private
| place to go. They've been called out to a trespassing
| call for a man who was setting up a tent near someone's
| home. They've helped people experiencing suicidal
| thoughts, people slumped against a fence, people simply
| acting strange.
|
| > "It's amazing how much stuff comes across 911 as the
| general, 'I don't know what to do, I guess I'll call
| 911,'" Richardson said. "Someone sets up a tent? 911. I
| can't find someone? 911."
| wool_gather wrote:
| There's a similar organization in Eugene, OR called
| CAHOOTS: https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020
| -07-06/eugen...
| NoOneNew wrote:
| Adding on to what you said: What people dont get about
| traffic stops, to issue someone a ticket, their ID needs to
| be ran to be validated. What also happens when you run an
| ID? Oh this person has a warrant(s). Who tends to shoot
| cops or anyone who decides to pull them over? People with
| warrants because they dont want to go to jail! Or they're
| riding dirty. An unarmed ticket maid won't stop the
| problems.
|
| Anyways, domestic disputes are some of the most dangerous
| calls for cops. A social worker to diffuse the situation
| seems like a good idea in theory. However reality doesn't
| give 2 shits about theory. The reason 911 is called out to
| these is because violence is about to happen, is happening
| or has been. Hell, Jacksonville sent a female officer to a
| a domestic dispute of something being stolen between 2
| females last year. Body cam shows the officer walks up to
| the door, knocks, announces herself takes two steps back
| and waits. A chick just opens the door with a knife and
| stabs the female officer. "Anecdotal" you say. No. I used
| to do security integration for a few police departments in
| Colorado. I got to know a lot of them and would just hear
| and see this dumb shit nearly daily. Hell, watch Donut
| Operator on youtube. The amount of videos like this are
| ridiculously high.
|
| Just out of the blue, a seemingly innocent call, someone
| gets their stupid on and attacks the cops. And this is
| Colorado (Denverand Co Springs area). Not the most
| dangerous area in the country. I now live in Florida.
|
| Do I think cops need a few weeks of better deescalation
| training or even a better training program needs to be
| developed? Absolutely and I know for a fact about 80% of
| other cops want this because they were talking about it
| back in 2015. Do all cops need to have better hand to hand
| combat training so they dont need to always result to their
| firearm or the ineffective less than lethal countermeasures
| provided (yea tasers and bean bags dont work nearly as
| often as you think). My opinion doesn't matter because 100%
| of cops have begged for this, again, since 2015 that I know
| of. But that all requires funding, unlike Seattle deciding
| to cut the PD budget by a 3rd, saying they wanted to take
| more and made their black female chief the poorest paid
| chief in Seattle history. Who, mind you, even the most
| racist sexist asshole who looks at her resume will say she
| earned being the chief, without question.
|
| I swear a majority of people are rational and understand
| that reality is a dangerous place and bad things happen.
| They know that defunding the cops and sending an unarmed
| social worker is just going to result in higher body bag
| orders or the police are going to get reinvented through
| them. That's enough internet for now.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Endless?
|
| In 2019 there were 48 cops killed in the line of duty by
| 'felonious acts'.
|
| 6 were killed during traffic stops
|
| https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-
| release...
| daenz wrote:
| I've seen a lot of police dashcam shootings, I guess my
| inaccuracy was to assume all of the officers actually
| died.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Consider the possibility that you see them _because_ they
| 're rare and thus notable enough to make the news etc.
|
| Also consider the possibility that there's propaganda
| benefit to making the public _think_ it 's common.
| daenz wrote:
| You're misinterpreting my "endless videos" comment to
| mean "happens with great regularly", instead of "this an
| established scenario to train for", within the context of
| traffic stops. People shoot cops at traffic stops, it's a
| thing that happens, and people should be aware of it.
|
| From your comments, it seems that because you can show
| that it's relatively rare, nobody should expect, plan
| for, or train for it. I look at stats that show police
| murder rate comparable to the general population and I am
| honestly impressed that they are able to keep it that low
| while dealing with some of the most dangerous elements of
| society. Do you believe it is because violent criminals
| have a similar level of hatred towards police as they do
| a member of the general public, or is it because police
| train for the worst case scenario?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > "this an established scenario to train for"
|
| Training is another key aspect of the problem.
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/02/dave-
| grossman-t...
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| This is also the case for cops shooting unarmed people.
| anchpop wrote:
| I'm totally on board with that plan (it would be nice if
| there were someone I could call to check on a possibly-
| suicidal friend who wouldn't show up with guns drawn).
| Americans are four times more likely to be killed by cops
| than Canadians, and 1 in 1000 young black men is killed by a
| cop (or some number along those lines). Clearly something
| should change.
|
| My question is, why call it "defund the police"? The core of
| the idea is that, in many cases we can change our response
| from involving police officers to involving some other group
| who will hopefully be able to do a better job. The fact that
| this can be accomplished by reallocating funds from the
| police department, to avoid needing to levy taxes to raise
| revenue, seems like almost the least important part of the
| plan. Even then, "defund the police" is only the first half
| of "defund the police and use the additional funding to
| create another group that picks up some of the police's
| responsibilities".
|
| My feeling is that many people view police with antipathy, so
| they like the slogan and concept of "defund the police"
| because it feels like a retaliation against the police. I
| strongly suspect that other ideas, some of which may be much
| more beneficial than changing the response, will be ignored
| if they can't be phrased as a tactical strike in the culture
| war.
|
| Here's one list of proposals [0] for police reform, many of
| which seem very promising for how little cultural sway they
| have (delegalize police unions, abolish QI, decriminalize
| victimless offenses, etc.) I wonder if they have so little
| sway because they can't be phrased in a sufficiently
| incendiary manner.
|
| (And by the way, just because there's antipathy towards the
| police doesn't mean the police are directly at fault. For
| instance, if police are made to enforce unpopular legislation
| like the war on drugs, that will obviously make people
| dislike them but the root problem is somewhat upstream)
|
| [0]: https://medium.com/@yudkowsky/a-comprehensive-reboot-of-
| law-...
| novok wrote:
| I don't know if the the more reasonable but equivalent
| slogans got replaced by the more spicy ones in some sort of
| meme survival of the fittest, or if it's a trend of today's
| social movements to use divisive or easy to misunderstand
| slogans on purpose.
|
| Ex: "Black lives matter too" vs "black lives matter". or
| "replace / reboot the police" vs "defund the police". The
| police one I'm having a hard time thinking of a slogan that
| would be better, maybe that's why it stuck.
| jancsika wrote:
| > "Black lives matter too" vs "black lives matter"
|
| _time travels back to a nearby counter-protest, yells:_
|
| "All Lives Matter, Always."
|
| _time travels back to the future_
|
| And now you're back to square one.
| GhostVII wrote:
| > 1 in 1000 young black men is killed by a cop
|
| Given that ~300 black men are killed by police each year, I
| don't think that math checks out.
|
| Agree with police reform, although we probably need more
| funding in many places, not less.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 300/year * an average lifespan of 78 years = 23400.
|
| Multiply that by 1,000 and you get 23M.
|
| There are 38M Black and African Americans in the USA,
| approximately half of which are male.
|
| The math checks out fine.
| GhostVII wrote:
| Yea that makes sense, surprising to me that it works out
| torstenvl wrote:
| It doesn't work out. A 78 year old is not a "young black
| man."
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I would suspect the ages of people shot by police are
| weighted fairly heavily in the younger category.
|
| https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793
|
| > Risk peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for all
| groups. For young men of color, police use of force is
| among the leading causes of death.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Criminality among young black men is also
| disproportionaly higher. This is for many troubling
| reasons, but in the moment of a police confrontation, the
| reasons why a particular person is engaging in some crime
| is irrelevant.
| GhostVII wrote:
| The violent crime rate for black men is roughly equal to
| the portion of police shooting victims which are black.
| Violent crime rate (excluding murder) is roughly 2x the
| average, and so is the death rate to police.
|
| That's why I think we need to be focusing on why black
| people have a higher crime rate, and how we can fix the
| societal problems that lead to that. Reducing the number
| of police shootings is a great goal, but so long as there
| is a racial (and gender) divide in the crime rate there
| is going to be a divide in the police shooting rate.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Criminality among young black men is also
| disproportionaly higher.
|
| Is it? Or are young black men just disproportionately
| more likely to be held accountable for their "Three
| felonies a day"?
| torstenvl wrote:
| 300/19740000 = 0.0000152
|
| - 0.999984802431611 chance of not-being-killed-by-police
| per year.
|
| pow(0.999984802431611, 69) = 0.998951909443727 chance of
| never being killed by police.
|
| - 0.001048090556273 chance of at some point being killed
| by police
|
| - just over 1/1000 over a lifetime.
|
| The math checks out... if we ignore the "young" part.
| kaens wrote:
| you call it defund the police because they are
| disproportionately overfunded.
| moron4hire wrote:
| > Americans are four times more likely to be killed by cops
| than Canadians
|
| I didn't know death by Canadian was something we tracked
| specifically :P
| roel_v wrote:
| It's an overarching term for people OD'ing on maple syrup
| and those being trampled by moose.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Because left wing rhetoric comes from grass roots ground up
| sort of activism. Right wing rhetoric is much smoother
| because they have full marketing teams and PR backing them.
| One is organic. One is designed. Organic movements are
| messy. Carefully designed messages are nice and succinct.
|
| One example of right wing consolidation around their
| designed messaging:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE
| YarickR2 wrote:
| So, how do you like right wing rhetoric in Capitol ?
| Messy ? Organic ?)
| [deleted]
| zpeti wrote:
| That's an interesting clarification as I've never heard this
| take before, especially from the press who's supposed to
| speak for the left. They seem pretty happy with just plain:
| let's defund the police, full stop.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > especially from the press who's supposed to speak for the
| left
|
| I have no idea what this quote means, but left leaning
| press have explained the concept of defunding the press
| just fine.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/05/defunding-
| th...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/07/defund-
| po...
| leetcrew wrote:
| have they? at the very least, they are not presenting a
| unified face.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
| abol...
| zepto wrote:
| Why would you want or expect the press to present a
| unified face?
| mike_h wrote:
| It's a handy assumption when you want to use straw-man
| arguments.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Because apparently "the press" and "the left" are both
| homogenous things that are in cahoots with each other
| to... do... something?
| smaddox wrote:
| I think the standard end to that sentence is "to destroy
| our democracy."
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't, and it would be very scary if it did. all I'm
| saying it's quite reasonable to be unsure what "defund
| the police" means. it's not at all clear that it has some
| generally accepted meaning.
| zepto wrote:
| I agree - it doesn't have some generally accepted
| meaning.
|
| Some people seem to mean 'no police at all' and some seem
| to mean 'don't task the police with trivial stuff'.
|
| But why then would the right assume it means the former?
| leetcrew wrote:
| well for one thing, the conservative slogan "defund
| planned parenthood" really does mean (AFAIK) remove all
| ways planned parenthood could possibly get a dollar from
| the government. it's not inconsistent to interpret
| "defund the police" the same way.
|
| but more generally, it's inevitable that the opposing
| side will interpret a vague slogan in the most negative
| and scary light possible. I suspect this is often by
| design, ie motte and bailey:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's and opinion piece and I don't believe she is a
| staff member, the byline is a clue.
|
| The article ends " Mariame Kaba (@prisonculture) is the
| director of Project NIA, a grass-roots group that works
| to end youth incarceration, and an anti-criminalization
| organizer".
|
| It's a good read, thanks.
| nickloewen wrote:
| It's true that there are differences of opinion among the
| many people participating in this conversation, and the
| reporting on it.
|
| But to be fair, this article does say:
|
| "But don't get me wrong. We are not abandoning our
| communities to violence. We don't want to just close
| police departments. We want to make them obsolete.
|
| "We should redirect the billions that now go to police
| departments toward providing health care, housing,
| education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be
| less need for the police in the first place.
|
| "We can build other ways of responding to harms in our
| society. Trained "community care workers" could do
| mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could
| use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people
| in prison."
| kurthr wrote:
| That's because the mainstream press doesn't speak for the
| left, it speaks to make money... and outrage sells clicks.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Both can be true.
| _jal wrote:
| > especially from the press who's supposed to speak for the
| left
|
| According to whom?
|
| The press speaks for the establishment, because to a large
| extent, that's who owns it. It sucks up to power and
| reflects its biases.
| Sharlin wrote:
| It was a dismal communication strategy from the non-fringe
| leftists to adopt that slogan; there was no way it wouldn't
| be interpreted as "abolish the police" by a large fraction
| of the constituents, likely alienating many moderates and
| giving their opponents an obvious counter. Something like
| "demilitarize the police" would likely have worked much
| better.
| hirsin wrote:
| As others have pointed out, the explanations have existed
| but perhaps not in your view.
|
| From where I stand (Seattle, know multiple Defund folks),
| the reaction has been "So, the one true thing we think cops
| should do - prevent significant violent action and protect
| people - they failed at. This further proves our point".
| You can dither on whether blocking traffic is violent (it's
| not) but the events really only strengthened their case -
| BLM peaceful protesting is met with an order of magnitude
| more violence than actual attempted attacks on the
| government. So why bother having cops if they don't do
| anything when it actually matters?
| krastanov wrote:
| The lack of clarity in the slogan has frustrated me as
| well, but most news coverage I have seen (NPR, NYT) is
| usually clear about its established meaning among the
| people using it. Same with in-person conversations.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| The problem is that "defund" means remove all funding. So
| these people are playing word games.
| _jal wrote:
| The problem is people who would rather whine about word
| choice in protest slogans instead the underlying issues.
| tertius wrote:
| No, the real problem is people getting angry because they
| think they understand the underlying issues.
|
| There is no reasoning that will allow down that anger. No
| looking at actual facts and statistics.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| They originally meant "remove all funding" which is why you
| would see this intermixed with "abolish the police". It was
| an initial emotional overreaction that they're trying to
| walk back. It would even be understandable (indeed,
| commendable) if they simply said, "we reacted emotionally
| to some troubling videos; we regret advocating for the
| abolition of police altogether, but we do want to see these
| other, more moderate reforms". Instead you have some people
| doubling down i.e., "no, we actually meant 'abolish the
| police'" and others who are cringingly pretending that
| "abolish the police" was some sort of metaphor. Both camps
| are more preoccupied with appearing to be correct than with
| actually being correct. Of course, someone will inevitably
| try to deflect to the errors of some other group, as though
| no one can be criticized except the worst group, which is
| the kind of race-to-the-bottom thinking that landed us here
| in the first place.
| jancsika wrote:
| > "we reacted emotionally to some troubling videos; we
| regret advocating for the abolition of police altogether,
| but we do want to see these other, more moderate reforms"
|
| Have you ever participated in politics? Because even in a
| small town government meeting, a board member stating
| they are changing their view because they "reacted
| emotionally" initially is going to immediately be
| followed by a call for them to resign.
|
| I'm not opining on the issue at hand. It's just that when
| I read the suggestions here on HN about political
| messaging, many of them don't line up with any political
| reality I'm familiar with.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Even still, the appropriate response isn't to double down
| or lie. If you don't like those options, consider your
| response before expressing it in the first place. I agree
| that we should normalize honesty though.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > The problem is that "defund" means remove all funding. So
| these people are playing word games.
|
| You have to that with slogans. They're low resolution, so
| there's an inevitable loss of fidelity. No one marches with
| a legislative proposal on a placard, and it would be
| unreasonable to do so.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| "Reform the police" is a slogan and accurate.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-police-reform-a-
| fund...
| Pfhreak wrote:
| It's not accurate, unfortunately. Reform is as ambiguous
| as defund. Do you mean totally eradicate and then reform
| a department? Or do you mean just telling them "do
| better"? Are you talking about re-forming the police or
| reforms for police?
| pluto9 wrote:
| That's a poor excuse. They're low resolution, but not so
| low resolution that you can chant a slogan and then claim
| you meant something else entirely. Why not "reform the
| police", or hell, even "disarm the police"?
| abathur wrote:
| Do you think "disarm the police" would be going better
| than "defund the police"?
|
| (I suspect it would actually be quite a bit more
| incendiary.)
|
| Communication (even at length) is hard. We all bring
| different baggage to every attempt to speak and listen.
| It's probably ~impossible once you mix in uncharitable
| readers/listeners.
|
| I can't speak for the campaigners, but I suspect "reform
| the police" won't cut the mustard for them because it's
| the sort of thing the establishment says before it fails
| to deliver meaningful change. "Today I'm calling for the
| establishment of a bipartisan commission on police
| reform", and its short imperative slogan--"reform the
| police"-- _could_ be an inspiring message if people had
| the impression that is how the gears sound when they 're
| spinning up to change something.
|
| But it's not very fair to insist people should be
| chanting a demand that seems to translate to "promise to
| look busy for a few months so that we'll go home and hope
| we don't notice when you don't solve the problem."
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Reform the police" has long been the tagline for
| ineffective measures. We've been trying to do it for
| decades; "defund the police" is in part a _response_ to
| the reform argument.
|
| "Disarm the police" would receive the exact same pearl
| clutching responses.
| sokoloff wrote:
| When you march with something that's objectively false
| and materially misleading, you lose my good faith
| engagement.
|
| "Defund the police" is misleading in a way that "Trump
| Train" and "Ridin' with Biden" are not. It's not a real
| train and Biden isn't with you, but people are not
| misled.
| naveen99 wrote:
| "Reduce police funding" ?
| ardy42 wrote:
| > "Reduce police funding"?
|
| Better in some ways, worse in others. It avoids the
| confusion with abolishment, but it looses the
| connotations of seriously changing the status quo.
| Because of that, it's less attention-grabbing.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The truth is _often_ less attention grabbing than
| falsehoods.
|
| It's "one crazy trick" or "you're not going to believe
| #7" but for matters that are actually important to
| discuss and debate in specifics.
| pera wrote:
| English is not my first language, but it seems an ambiguous
| slogan as the prefix _de-_ not only means _to remove_ but
| also _to reduce_ / degrade. For instance, there were some
| recent calls for "defunding the Pentagon", in the sense of
| reducing military spending.
|
| > Defund
|
| > to deplete the financial resources of
|
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/defund
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| You left out the first definition:
|
| > to withdraw financial support from, especially as an
| instrument of legislative control
| pera wrote:
| Correct, that's why I used the word "ambiguous" (i.e.
| having or expressing more than one possible meaning).
| ryguytilidie wrote:
| I mean, you're basically the problem here. You're very
| clearly being disingenuous and playing word games at the
| exact moment you're accusing others of doing the same.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I take "defund the police" to mean the opposite of "fund the
| police".
| sokoloff wrote:
| How sure are you that it's the same people?
|
| For my account, I'm in favor of arresting and charging everyone
| acting criminally lawlessly, whether wearing a Viking helmet, a
| MAGA hat, or a BLM shirt.
|
| I want the public to be free from the oppression caused by
| lawless rioting.
| pjc50 wrote:
| .. provided they're held to the same standard. Which has been
| a problem up till now.
| D13Fd wrote:
| I think a lot of people weren't thinking things through, and a
| lot of the "defund the police" stuff was hyperbole.
|
| Also, a violent insurrection literally storming and occupying
| the seat of the U.S. government, with the goal of changing the
| incoming government, is very different from what happened this
| summer.
|
| What happened this summer included a large number of violent
| riots, but they targeted mainly state and local governments and
| private property, and without the goal of regime change.
|
| Both are very bad, but open insurrection against the sitting
| U.S. government is far worse.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| The establishment of "autonomous zones" were technically also
| acts of insurrection.
| beerandt wrote:
| But censorship / de-platforming leads to communication being
| pushed underground...
|
| and _that_ will be their argument for increased surveillance.
| Arubis wrote:
| In my ideal world, the highly visible use of pervasive, systemic
| surveillance to rapidly identify, locate, apprehend, and
| prosecute the scores of folks that casually committed long-
| minimum-sentence federal crimes both discourages future criminal
| actions and sparks a debate over whether watching and recording
| everybody all the time is the way we want to live.
|
| I'm not so naive that I believe that'll actually happen, though.
|
| Tangentially, that pervasive surveillance is "saving" this
| investigation instead of letting most potential suspects go
| unidentified is indicative of the general trend of police
| departments getting lazy about doing actual investigative police
| work---increasingly, if it's not electronically recorded
| evidence, it may as well not have happened.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, obviously not. It was telegraphed beforehand that it would
| happen on Twitter and Parler by various loons, by the US
| president, his kids, and his insane lawyer, and no-one did a
| thing (or, arguably, people did less than the reasonable
| minimum). And presumably the surveillance that already exists
| picked up some more than that. The problem was (possibly
| deliberate) negligence, not a lack of intelligence.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Of all the pictures and videos from _inside_ the Capitol, has
| anyone seen any trespassers /protestors/rioters/insurrectionists
| carrying weapons? I caught some of it live and have been looking
| since and haven't seen any.
|
| Pictures or video would be appreciated.
| mch82 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Early live video showed people who looked like tourists. Things
| escalated dramatically.
|
| Zip cuff guy appears to have a gun on his hip in addition to
| the body armor & zip ties for taking hostages.
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/zip-cuffs-capitol-riots/
|
| We're now learning of pipe bombs.
| https://www.businessinsider.com/pipe-bomb-reportedly-found-a...
|
| The killed police officer was attacked with a fire
| extinguisher, so things other than guns can be used as weapons.
|
| Many photos show body armor, riot shields, and staffs.
|
| Photos show Members of Congress escorted to safety in CBRN
| hoods (protection against chemical, biological, radiological,
| nuclear air pollution).
|
| The C-SPAN live feed was cut off for the safety of Congress &
| the staff at the Capitol. You can watch the moment on YouTube,
| plus the subsequent audio only broadcast.
|
| What do you think? Is that helpful?
| beerandt wrote:
| There were two incidents I've read of, neither inside the
| capital or even on capital grounds.
|
| One was a guy who had two 9mm handguns. No mention of what led
| to the arrest, but it seems to be a stop and frisk type of
| encounter.
|
| The other is the guy who allegedly had a wagon of molotov's,
| and was also carrying some type of firearm.
|
| Neither seem to be incidents of the people being in the act of
| using the weapons. Although if the guy had actual molotovs,
| yeah that's not good.
| newguy1234 wrote:
| A few were but it was a tiny proportion. Think 5 people out of
| 100,000 that went type of situation.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| There's a very well documented Google sheet floating around
| with most of the videos and pictures of the event.
|
| I won't link because it contains very graphic videos of the
| death of one of the participant.
| stogxx wrote:
| No but I did see an unarmed protestor get shot in the face by a
| police officer
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The Capitol Attack Doesn't Justify Expanding Surveillance
|
| In the sense of paying a few people to monitor public social
| media sites so that widespread in-the-open planning of a mass
| violent attack on the Capitol doesn't result in the FBI having no
| indication that anything but First Amendment-protected activities
| are planned, it does justify expanding surveillance.
|
| It doesn't justify additional government surveillance _powers_ ,
| or intrusion into privacy, though.
| zepto wrote:
| I think we'll find that there was plenty of surveillance to
| detect the attack. Just no emphasis on the threat.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Or motivation to stop the threat. I'm truly worried about more
| armed uprising and no enforcement.
| newguy1234 wrote:
| Law enforcement/FBI have never been good at stopping
| terrorist attacks. The only ones they stop are the ones where
| the attacker is being stupid obvious like openly talking
| about it online. Most of the time they let them go through
| because "they need to build a case".
| mimixco wrote:
| This could be the beginning of the end for anonymous social
| media. I can see lawmakers suggesting we move to a KYC model like
| fintech or like China has where a real ID must be associated with
| each social account. It would certainly help curtail bots and
| also make it riskier for people to promote violence in a public
| forum.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The thing is, _these_ protests didn 't expect the police to
| fight or arrest them. They did all this stuff in public under
| their real names. Someone wore their _work ID lanyard_ to storm
| the Capitol.
|
| It's not risky to promote violence in public forums in the US
| provided you're not specific about it. Heck, the ringleader was
| the president; it's not like we need him to submit ID to get
| his Twitter back.
| kyrra wrote:
| While what Trump did here was bad, it's also important to know
| that others were a bit incompetent in this incident.
|
| 1) capital police rejects offers for more support before the
| event. The capitol police chief resigned because of it.
| https://wjla.com/news/local/capitol-police-to-resign-after-r...
|
| 2) The sergeant arms for the house and senate also both resigned.
| https://nypost.com/2021/01/07/senate-sgt-at-arms-resigns-aft...
|
| There have also been much larger protests in the capital where
| they never breached the capital building. No one properly
| prepared for this demonstration.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > capital police rejects offers for more support before the
| event.
|
| While I think the demands for th resignations of the various
| Capitol officials involved were warranted, I suspect that it
| will turn out that reliance on the FBI intelligence assessment
| that there was no indication that anything other than First
| Amendment protected activities were likely played a significant
| role in this and the other preparation failures.
| kyrra wrote:
| I'm guessing it's going to be more complicated than that. One
| thing I think I learned during the Trump presidency is that
| the federal bureaucracy will leak nuggets of information that
| make them look good or paint the story that they want. But
| when the full facts and truth of a given situation come out
| it tends to be far more complicated than far less clear cut
| than what the initial leaks seem to paint.
| newguy1234 wrote:
| The tech community has already been hitting the drum beat for
| stripping our liberties and massively expanding the surveillance
| programs under the guise of "stopping terrorism".
|
| Why do you think Biden was quick to identify the protest as
| terrorism? It will set the tone for the rest of his
| administration. Civil liberties will be stripped in the name of
| security/stopping terrorism.
| bebopcowboy wrote:
| It's already happening and he hasnt even been inaugurated. It's
| also being cheered on by the shills on this website employed by
| big tech
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Agreed. It does not seem like there was a breakdown in
| information here, a lot of detail was known both before and
| after. No justification for a power grab.
| imbnwa wrote:
| One question that comes to mind in all this is how come RICO laws
| don't apply to Trump in this case. In a RICO case, if I told you
| to go kill someone and you went and did it, I'm as culpable for
| the murder as you are. But for some reason this doesn't apply to
| cases of free speech traceably inciting action by a third-party?
| I am entirely unsure when a situation can have RICO statutes
| applied, but the very existence of RICO also sorta contradicts
| free speech
| exabrial wrote:
| Nor does it justify closing public discussion with those you
| disagree with.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| That Capitol attack is misnamed: The attack was an attempt to
| remove an opposing branch of government.
|
| Leading to, irrespective of their intentions, a probable
| dictatorship and end of this American experiment.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Zero chance any of that would have happened. It certainly could
| have gotten more ugly than it was. But a loosely organized mob
| of protestors is not going to achieve that. One SWAT team, or
| the military if necessary, would have dealt with it easily.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Zero chance bull. The majority of the mob were not organized,
| but there was a core of co-operating individuals that came
| prepared with Kevlar, weapons, specialized restraint zip
| ties, etc, and appeared trained. Who knows what would have
| happened if they had breached sooner than the
| Senators/Congressman could have escaped to safety? And
| without that branch being able to function, who knows what
| Trump might try to claim empowered to do?
|
| Is this likely? Maybe, maybe not. But I tell you what. There
| is more danger to under-emphasizing the threat than over-
| emphasizing the threat. Indeed, fear and control over
| executive power is at the core of our Constitution and
| founders' fears. I will not play down what happened, and who
| instigated it.
|
| The general mob could also have quickly instigated a
| massacre. Chants of "Hang M. Pence."
| 3princip wrote:
| Is the talking point in the US that disgruntled Americans are
| terrorists?! Really? Right, wrong, crazy ... however you see
| them. Kinda scary calling citizens terrorists, especially on a
| political basis.
|
| Protestors invading government buildings is quite common in the
| world, but calling citizens terrorists is usually something you
| see in non-democratic regimes.
| mch82 wrote:
| No.
|
| The talking point is that the violent extremists who broke into
| the Capitol chanting "kill [Republican Vice President] Mike
| Pence", wearing body armor, armed with guns, pipe bombs, and
| zip ties for taking hostages are terrorists.
|
| Do you disagree?
| okamiueru wrote:
| Seems awfully disingenuous to call this "disgruntled
| Americans". Surely, out of all the possible traits to point out
| here, being "disgruntled" isn't the defining factor.
|
| So let's not mince words and false pretenses here. Here is a
| fair definition of terrorism:
|
| "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially
| against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims"
|
| Now, let's go through the list. Was there violence involved?
| Yes. Was there intimidation. Yes. Was this against civilians
| and politically motivated.. well yes.
|
| Then it begs the question, is this wilful ignorance, or is
| there some malice involved. I suppose that is for you to know.
| But I find it annoying that it's so prevalent. Whichever it is.
| bebopcowboy wrote:
| Especially after we just had widespread arson and looting in
| every American city all summer while these same people heaped
| praise on the perpetrators.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| AFAICT most protestors over the summer were peaceful. There
| didn't seem to be much sympathy for those destroying property
| or stealing merchandise.
|
| Regardless I'd agree that the Jan. 6 protestors weren't
| trying to incite terror so much as stop a process they've
| been convinced was flawed.
|
| Hopefully with a change of government the US political
| culture can mellow and maybe even reconcile a bit.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Kinda scary calling citizens terrorists
|
| Historically, most terrorists, most places in the world, are
| citizens of the countries they're doing the terrorism in.
|
| > especially on a political basis
|
| Terrorism is essentially always politically motivated.
|
| > but calling citizens terrorists is usually something you see
| in non-democratic regimes
|
| Eh? No it isn't. Here's a list for Germany, for instance; most
| are domestic:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Germany#List_of_s...
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is very good. Not more policing, but better policing.
| Turning a blind eye to this or pardoning certain crimes but not
| others is just as much an injustice as over-policing.
|
| And someone needs to have a deep inquiry into what happened with
| calling in reinforcements.
| boxmonster wrote:
| We need to crack down on performative speech. Alex Jones and
| Tucker Carlson shouldn't be able to hide behind the legal
| arguments that their words aren't meant to be taken seriously
| because they are performative.
| stogxx wrote:
| Carlson cuts right to the truth. I can see why many on the left
| dislike him.
| boxmonster wrote:
| "You Literally Can't Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells
| You. So Say Fox's Lawyers"
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-
| cant-...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Interesting development: Alex Jones just threw Trump under the
| bus and claims he received direct orders from Trump.
| zepto wrote:
| Given that he claims lizard aliens control the government, it
| doesn't seem like it would be hard for him to be discredited
| about this.
| newguy1234 wrote:
| So get rid of freedom of speech? Got it.
| boxmonster wrote:
| I didn't say get rid of it. How about requiring a warning
| label on these shows? I mean the lawyers for Jones and
| Carlson have already argued they aren't meant to be taken
| seriously. I think a label run on their shows would be
| enough.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Of course it doesn't, the perps were discussing this openly and
| in plaintext on various websites which are still in the air. Who
| needs surveillance. What you do need is to react to available
| intelligence, but this isn't the first time in history that that
| doesn't happen.
|
| They are _also_ presently discussing their next day-out for
| rednecks in the form of another insurrection and coup attempt on
| the 17th of January. Let 's hope that this time some people will
| take notice because while everybody seems to be happy that this
| effort failed from the perspective of the perps it looks like a
| major victory: they took the bloody capitol with such ease that
| 10 minutes more planning would have had them hold house or senate
| members or even the VP or the speaker hostage. Or worse.
|
| This isn't over yet.
| spamizbad wrote:
| Not only that, but multiple people were taking screenshots,
| linking authorities to posts, even sharing doxxed information
| with law enforcement _prior_ to the event. They ignored it!
| [deleted]
| tolbish wrote:
| The problem isn't that we don't have the tools to fight these
| terrorists. The problem is that many of our politicians and
| police are siding with the terrorists, or at the very least
| sympathetic to their cause.
|
| This isn't a new phenomenon either. This has been documented
| [0] time and time again [1].
|
| [0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/fbi-white-
| supremacists-i...
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/27/white-
| suprem...
| bumbada wrote:
| The problem is that absolute power means people in power can
| become the terrorist. Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Polpot or
| Stalin took so much power that they became the terrorist
| themselves.
|
| They killed hundreds of millions of people. You could be
| raped of tortured at any time.
|
| It is not white supremacist. It is anyone with power.
|
| Right now in the US, the antifa movement is as violent or
| more violent than anyone else. Certainly the Guardian is not
| an unbiased source.
| beezle wrote:
| The fact that the DoD time line of events shows it took Army
| officials in charge of DC National Guard 90 minutes to
| approve deployment after DC mayoral request (while they watch
| it all in realtime on TV) certainly lends credence to the
| sympathy angle.
|
| ref: https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jan/08/2002562063/-1/-1/1
| /PLA...
| imbnwa wrote:
| Also the DOJ and FBI have known for a while many local police
| departments are ideologically comprimised towards Right
| Extremism and aren't really doing much[0]
|
| [0]https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/hidd...
| m463 wrote:
| I believe the appropriate tool to fight this is simple:
|
| verifiable voting
|
| I think literally anyone on this site could invent a more
| reliable and common-sense approach to voting.
|
| This is all just fallout from a fallible system that has
| little trust.
| willis936 wrote:
| I don't buy the "voting isn't trustworthy" narrative. I buy
| the "I claim voting isn't trustworthy when my tribe loses
| an election" angle.
| m463 wrote:
| It's not a narrative. Voting isn't trustworthy.
| willis936 wrote:
| How is that not a narrative? It certainly is not a fact.
| fragmede wrote:
| There is always a well-known solution to every human
| problem--neat, plausible, and wrong.
|
| The problem with verifiable voting is that it has to break
| one the properties of American democracy, the secret
| ballot, or else it doesn't really work. As a voter, I want
| to see that a) it was recorded that I voted, and b) what my
| vote was. In the case of invented voter fraud, both A and B
| need to be possible, but making both of those possible mean
| it's possible to show who I voted for. Who I voted for is a
| secret, and is one of the central tenants to American
| democracy. I can talk about supporting candidate A in
| public and vote for candidate B in private and a lot of
| properties follow from that.
|
| The challenge isn't technical, it's a social problem, and
| technical measures won't solve social problems.
| csense wrote:
| > The challenge isn't technical
|
| This problem might have a technical solution though.
| First, each voter generates a private key and publishes
| the corresponding public key. Then implement a
| homomorphic vector addition, everybody submits their vote
| as an encrypted vector, and then you somehow add the
| vectors together homomorphically, i.e. the addition can
| be done without decrypting them first.
|
| You need some kind of way to prove that each vector
| corresponds to a legal vote (i.e. increases the vote
| total of at most one candidate by at most one vote.) Then
| you need some way to decrypt the encrypted vector sum
| using some amalgamation of everybody's public keys, but
| without allowing to decrypt subtotals for particular
| subsets.
|
| You can publish all the encrypted votes received and the
| decrypting amalgamation, so anyone with the capability to
| download and process a large data set. Anyone can check
| that every vote was cryptographically approved by a
| distinct pre-registered voter and the votes were totaled
| honestly.
|
| If we assume an upper bound of 1 billion voters, each 1
| kb of encrypted vector size adds 1 TB to the raw vote
| data. Based on existing "clever" cryptosystems that do
| similar things (e.g. ZK-snarks), it's reasonable to guess
| we won't need more than 100 kb per encrypted vector. So
| an entire 1-billion-voter election could be processed by
| a small storage cluster with 100 TB, you can't verify it
| on your laptop, but the technically inclined could verify
| the vote themselves for probably somewhere around $1,000
| - $20,000 of hardware and sysadmin time.
|
| I don't know if there's existing crypto math to do this,
| but I'm pretty sure it at least hasn't been proven
| impossible.
|
| The kind of crypto primitives needed for this kind of
| system _might_ be found someday.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I don't think even those politicians and officers wanted the
| Capitol breached; what happened was they didn't think there
| people would do it. It's a huge bias. If the same was
| discussed by anyone outside that category of people it would
| have been met with the appropriate preparation and mitigation
| measures.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| This really speaks to the problem, though. They've proven
| to be more than happy to bait the mob when they think they
| can use it to consolidate their own power.
|
| The GOP has been doing a large scale equivalent of swinging
| nunchucks around in public. The problem isn't that
| sometimes it swings around the wrong way and whacks someone
| they didn't intend to whack. Well, no, it is, of course
| that's a problem. But the more fundamental problem is that
| they're recklessly swinging an unpredictable weapon in
| public in an effort to be intimidating in the first place.
| And the problem is that people who didn't feel personally
| threatened by this behavior just sat there and came up with
| sorry excuses to try and rationalize it. This is deeply
| antisocial comportment that should have no place in the top
| echelons of civil society.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| > They've proven to be more than happy to bait the mob
| when they think they can use it to consolidate their own
| power.
|
| But both sides are doing it.
|
| Kamala Harris, speaking on protests and rioting after the
| death of George Floyd: "They're not going to stop.
| They're not going to stop. This is a movement, I'm
| telling you. They're not gonna stop. And everyone beware
| because they're not gonna stop. They're not gonna stop
| before Election Day and they're not going to stop after
| Election Day. And everyone should take note of that.
| They're not gonna let up and they should not."
| mumblemumble wrote:
| Quote mining is such a magical thing.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-kamala-
| harris-l...
| MereInterest wrote:
| I see a pretty big difference between protests against
| police violence and protests against an election result.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| yes, far more people died during the former. the ethical
| double standard you are creating exists in your mind and
| in your mind only. when people see violence excused and
| ignored for months on end, it becomes legitimized as a
| tactic in their playbook as well. this is the current
| sickness in our discourse that we have to reckon with and
| trying to play 'most righteous cause' is the furthest
| thing from a solution.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Supposedly more cops died in one day of (presumably Thin
| Blue Line supporting) riots at the US Capital than did
| many months of the so-called "anti-cop" demonstrations.
| Perhaps if the police cleared out the MAGA folks as
| enthusiastically as they did the peaceful demonstrators
| for Trump's church photo-op, then a lot of this could be
| avoided.
|
| And the goal of the BLM demonstration was not violence,
| whereas that _was_ the goal of at least some (if not
| many) of the MAGA folks. Quite a few folks walking around
| with zip ties and more than one noose as well.
|
| Going back to July 27, 2020, Trump tweeted:
|
| > _Anarchists, Agitators or Protestors who vandalize or
| damage our Federal Courthouse in Portland, or any Federal
| Buildings in any of our Cities or States, will be
| prosecuted under our recently re-enacted Statues &
| Monuments Act. MINIMUM TEN YEARS IN PRISON. Don't do it!
| @DHSgov_
|
| * https://www.cbs17.com/news/national-news/trump-tweet-
| threate...
|
| * https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/128787762138
| 08373...
| caconym_ wrote:
| IIRC there are 25 deaths attributed to the "BLM
| protests". That includes _all_ of them, across the
| country, likely a number of events in the high hundreds
| or low thousands. AFAIK that number does not include any
| police deaths, though there were a couple attributed to
| right-wing extremists in the same period.
|
| In a single medium-sized event, Wednesday's riot got 5
| people killed. One of them was a policeman, and at least
| three of them were due to violence. So in terms of
| fatalities per participant-day, Wednesday's event was
| probably at least two orders of magnitude more violent
| than the "BLM protests" taken as a whole.
|
| I think that's a significant difference, and one that
| exposes this sort of whataboutism as false equivalency
| (in addition to the other issues with whataboutism).
| spaginal wrote:
| BLM is responsible for many police killings, including
| one incident in Dallas in 2016 where 5 police officers
| were murdered in one event.
|
| I know this country has memory holed the negative actions
| of BLM, but they have a lot of law enforcement blood on
| their hands.
| jjeaff wrote:
| No police were killed by BLM protestors. And considering
| the vastly larger amount of protests with BLM (more than
| 9000 protests), it's a wonder more violence didn't
| happen.
|
| Had every BLM protest been as violent and unhinged as the
| capitol protests, we would have had thousands of deaths.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > No police were killed by BLM protestors.
|
| This is not true. Here is one example of a retired St.
| Louis Police captain/current (at the time) police chief
| of Moline Acres being killed.
|
| https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-
| courts/retired...
|
| There are other examples as well.
|
| > Had every BLM protest been as violent and unhinged as
| the capitol protests,
|
| Aside from the single police officer, all the deaths seem
| to have been protestors. At least two were killed by
| police - one was shot by the police, and the other was
| pushed off a balcony.
|
| It is the case that between two and three dozen people
| were killed during the BLM protests and associated
| actions like the autonomous zone, with nearly all of
| them, judging by the articles I have found, being
| _victims_ of the protestors rather than protestors
| themselves.
| acdha wrote:
| There's also a huge difference between people standing in
| the street shouting that they don't like you and breaking
| down the doors to a restricted federal building after
| saying they were going to kill you and/or shut down a
| civic proceeding.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| There police protests included riots, arson, looting, and
| murders. Harris didn't condemn this until months later
| when specifically pressed on the point. Just as Trump has
| always condemned violence when specifically asked.
| throw0101a wrote:
| She was talking about BLM protests, whose goal was not
| violence:
|
| > _" I know there are protests still happening in major
| cities across the United States, I'm just not seeing the
| reporting on it that I had for the first few weeks,"
| Colbert said._
|
| > _" That's right," Harris replied. "But they're not
| gonna stop. They're not gonna stop, and this is a
| movement, I'm telling you."_
|
| * https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/09/0
| 1/fac...
|
| See also Biden on violence:
|
| * https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/0
| 7/fac...
|
| Meanwhile, the rioters at the US Capital:
|
| > _"This is not America," a woman said to a small group,
| her voice shaking. She was crying, hysterical. "They're
| shooting at us. They're supposed to shoot BLM, but
| they're shooting the patriots."_
|
| * https://archive.is/tZVFs (paywall)
|
| * https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/capitol-
| trump-ins...
| Amezarak wrote:
| > She was talking about BLM protests, whose goal was not
| violence:
|
| Maybe that wasn't the goal, as it also wasn't the goal of
| most of the Trump protestors. But there was nevertheless
| plenty of violence.
|
| Just seven months ago, dozens of Secret Service agents
| were hospitalized after being attacked by BLM protestors
| attempting to storm the White House.
|
| https://www.newsmax.com/us/white-house-secret-
| service/2020/0...
|
| Recent events have really, really opened my eyes as to
| how the media covers events that it supports versus
| events it does not support.
| throwaway9980 wrote:
| You know what else both sides are doing? Whatabout
| whatabout whatabout whatabout! Just stop already. If you
| can't see the difference then you are just willfully
| closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I think that's possibly an over-charitable view, but if you
| accept it it still paints them as negligent and
| incompetent. "Some terrorists have explicitly said they
| will do this thing, in public, but, eh, they probably
| won't, so why worry about it" is a ridiculous take for
| someone in their position.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| You mean politicians like the mayor of DC, a Democrat who
| refused offers of assistance from the military in the days
| before the riot?
|
| https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-01-07/dc-
| riots-c...
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Can't read that due to adblock but this seems to be the
| same story -
| https://apnews.com/article/55972c6be7b819f46ec0ec55addd64b7
|
| Which doesn't mention anything about Mayor Bowser refusing
| offers of assistance - only the Capitol Police. Indeed, it
| cites her asking for assistance on December 31st in
| preparation.
| xxpor wrote:
| The capitol police aren't under the control of the DC
| mayor, they're part of the legislative branch.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| There needs to be a thorough review of the social media and
| tattoos of all law enforcement in the US. Anyone with a hint
| of ties to the white supremacist militias or movements needs
| to be immediately fired. I'm hoping the Biden DoJ will issue
| a lot of consent decrees and thoroughly investigate every
| police agency in the country.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| you know the goal is to _deradicalize_ people, right?
| rsynnott wrote:
| When the East German police force was dissolved, its
| employees were allowed to apply for positions in the new
| police force (though without a guarantee of a position).
| Except for those with ties to the Stasi, who were barred.
| There is precedent for such an approach, and at least in
| that case it seems to have largely worked.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| was this preceded by mass social and economic unrest and
| presided over by a government half the population views
| as illegitimate? good governance can bring the country
| back together, crackdowns, purges and retaliation will
| create the monster that you think is already there.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > was this preceded by mass social and economic unrest
|
| Is this a joke?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Curtain#Fall_of_the_Ir
| on_...
| baconner wrote:
| It's pretty sad watching all the comments here calling this
| suggestion mccarthyism, witch hunt, etc. Police departments
| should be doing this and holding their employees to a high
| standard that's not a witch hunt that's common sense.
|
| If you are a member of a violent gang or are too racist to
| police justly you are too dangerous to employ as a cop. Not
| looking for and removing these people is intentionally
| turning a blind eye to the extreme danger they present to
| people in their communities.
| stogxx wrote:
| A far left witch hunt. What could go weong?
| gedy wrote:
| Oh but this time it will be alright, unlike USSR, Eastern
| Europe, China, Cambodia, et al /s
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| The Right Wing victim complex is real.
| gedy wrote:
| You don't have to be right or left wing to call out
| hypocracy, especially if there's historical precedence.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| The hypocrisy is that the US has and is supporting 'which
| hunts' all over the globe, which the right largely
| supports. Perhaps it's just that it's also starting to
| come back home now.
| ghthor wrote:
| Time for the gulags
| imbnwa wrote:
| The FBI and DOJ already know the extent of Right
| Extremist sympathy in local law enforcement[0]
|
| [0]https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/hidd...
| cookingrobot wrote:
| If you think being against white supremacy is "far left",
| you might be a little too far to the right.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Is the right-wing not against white supremacy?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is the right-wing not against white supremacy?
|
| Appeal to white supremacists to attempt to build a
| winning coalition has been a core GOP strategy for more
| than a half century; that part of the right-wing that
| isn't itself white supremacist relies on support from
| white supremacists to advance their agenda. (To be fair,
| that was true of the Democratic Party instead of the GOP
| from the founding _until_ the 1960s, but for a couple of
| breaches between the extreme racists and the rest of the
| party that were usually healed in short order. White
| supremacy has always been a powerful enough force in
| America that it 's always been a significant influence on
| at least one major party.)
| atlgator wrote:
| Heading for another era of McCarthy-ism. This time from the
| left instead of the right.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I'm not at all interested in mob justice (going in either
| direction). But still, comparing this idea to McCarthyism
| is sneaking toward Godwin's Law territory.
|
| There's a pretty big gulf between a relatively abstract
| set of political and economic opinions, and an ideology
| that views some groups of people as sub-human and
| inherently criminal, and specifically seeks to
| disenfranchise them. One can quite reasonably make the
| case that individuals who hold opinions along those lines
| are temperamentally incapable of protecting and serving
| their community. Their _whole_ community.
|
| The Chicago Public Library had a gallery documenting
| victims of torture by the Chicago Police Department.
| Plenty of photographs, making it quite clear that it was
| almost exclusively a thing that White cops did to Black
| and Latinx citizens. It's hard to see how we as a society
| can hope to eliminate state-committed atrocities like
| that if we're not even willing to weed the ideology that
| produces them out of the paramilitary wings of our local
| governments.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I truly, truly do not understand. We _know_ far right
| extremists have infiltrated law enforcement agencies. We
| _know_ many people who participated in the terrorist
| attack on the Capitol were in law enforcement. We _know_
| even some of the uniformed officers were fraternizing
| with and aiding the terrorists. These are facts.
|
| Why on earth would we not try to detect and remove these
| people from law enforcement agencies?
| [deleted]
| atlgator wrote:
| Do we know that? Or is it just propaganda to manipulate
| us? Because it sounds like a conspiracy theory.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| As for the mass infiltration of law enforcement by far
| right extremists, both official agencies such as the FBI
| and independent investigators have produced copious
| evidence and all reached that conclusion.
|
| As for law enforcement involvement in the terrorist
| attack on the capitol, there are plenty of videos. Law
| enforcement agencies around the country have also
| disclosed that some of their officers were involved,
| which seems like an odd thing to fabricate.
|
| So yes. We know that.
| odessacubbage wrote:
| because that is literally how you create a trained
| insurgency.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Many countries have had to prune their police forces of
| extremists. East Germany, Northern Ireland, South
| Africa... Generally, the negative consequences of this
| have been minor and manageable; it's a path already well-
| trodden.
| ciceryadam wrote:
| Germany in 2019: https://m.dw.com/en/neo-nazi-scandal-
| hits-german-elite-milit...
| rsynnott wrote:
| That's absolutely a real and serious issue, but it's a
| separate issue to the dissolution and reform of the East
| German police during unification, which didn't lead to a
| communist insurgency.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Are you saying white supremacy is just another political
| ideology in the marketplace of ideas? Because I don't
| believe that. White supremacists must be removed from all
| law agencies. And they are usually pretty public about
| their white supremacy on their facebooks.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| So you believe that the crowd protesting and at the
| Capitol were all white supremacists?
| ABeeSea wrote:
| We were discussing the infiltration of white supremacists
| in law enforcement. Not sure what your question is
| getting at in regard to that discussion.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Indeed, I read the GP hastily.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I'm sure if you went and asked them if they were racist,
| most of them would not claim to be. But, considering that
| the stated purpose of the protest is founded on the
| continued belief that the only possible explanation for
| Trump's election loss was a epic-scale government
| conspiracy, we're not exactly dealing with a group of
| people whose beliefs about the state of things are easy
| to reconcile with reality.
|
| Speaking on a more macro scale, the movement that
| produced that protest and this insurrection is so
| transparently rooted in racism, with roots going back at
| least as far as the Southern Strategy, that we're now to
| the point that trying to apologize for them is, at the
| absolute best, an act of petty denialism.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Well, the people wearing "6MWE" and other anti-semitic
| tshirts certainly were.
| AsyncAwait wrote:
| Funny how you suddenly supposedly have sympathy for the
| victims of McCarthyism while the right is still today
| calling anyone left of the far right a communist marxist.
| [deleted]
| bra-ket wrote:
| It's so pleasant to see the libs shit their pants.
|
| Go rednecks! We need an American revolution.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Let's hope that this time some people will take notice
| because while everybody seems to be happy that this effort
| failed from the perspective of the perps it looks like a major
| victory: they took the bloody capitol with such ease that 10
| minutes more planning would have had them hold house or senate
| members or even the VP or the speaker hostage. Or worse.
|
| Except that... then what? That isn't how a coup works. You
| can't just take hostages and then make demands about who gets
| to be the President. It has no effect. Official actions taken
| under duress are invalid. As soon as you leave the building
| nobody is going to honor anything you demanded.
|
| It's easy to take a building. Just show up with greater numbers
| than there are cops in the area. But a building is not the
| government. Physical possession of the Senate floor isn't what
| grants the power to do anything. It's purely symbolic.
|
| The fact is that law enforcement operates primarily through
| deterrence. You can install some bulletproof glass and things
| like that, but the main thing preventing murders and such is
| that if you do it then you go to jail for a long time after.
| skolos wrote:
| Russia took Crimea by first just simply taking buildings. So
| once you physically possess important buildings you can do
| all sorts of interesting stuff.
| notahacker wrote:
| I don't think the fact that taking hostages wouldn't actually
| succeed in making Trump president for the next four years is
| reason _not_ to hope that law enforcement is suitably
| prepared to prevent emboldened 'patriots' from trying.
| Indeed it's precisely because such people are largely immune
| to normal deterrence measures you need law enforcement to be
| more effective.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| I don't know if I can agree with the normal deterrence
| methods being ineffective. Despite claims of _insurrection_
| , they basically pushed their way into the building and
| then stood around. What stopped them from doing a lot worse
| wasn't that anyone could have stopped them in the moment,
| it was the deterrent (or the optics, which is effectively
| the same thing).
|
| And different measures could make a marginal difference one
| way or the other, but if you have a huge mob of people
| trying to get into a building not explicitly designed to be
| a fortress, that's pretty hard to stop.
| notahacker wrote:
| I think what played a bigger role in stopping them from
| doing a lot worse was their targets had been evacuated,
| and when they tried to break into more secure areas one
| of them got shot. And sure, the truth is that a lot of
| people there weren't very bright and things got out of
| hand. But even the people taking selfies and souvenirs
| whilst the considerably-less-harmless guys in military
| fatigues carrying flex cuffs looked for Pence didn't fear
| punishment for their actions. You could tell that by the
| way they gave their names and itemised the crimes they'd
| committed to media outlets they supposed were sympathetic
| or livestreamed the whole thing.
|
| Sure, a huge mob of people trying to get into a building
| not explicitly designed to be a fortress isn't easy to
| stop, and with the limited resources available evacuation
| was probably the right move, but what we actually saw on
| video in front of the Capitol was a line of about six
| police and a movable fence, and open doors. I've seen
| more convincing looking security at music festivals. You
| can try to deter people by _what might happen if they
| try_ rather than _what happens if they succeed_ ,
| especially if they're crazy people who think what will
| actually happen if they succeed is President Trump giving
| them a medal.
| LaMarseillaise wrote:
| > and then stood around.
|
| They did not just stand around [1]. This was extremely
| violent, and they intended to murder people. Deterrence
| meant nothing to them. They were only stopped because the
| Capitol Police and Secret Service shot one of them.
| Different measures would absolutely have made a
| difference and saved lives.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhjRXO72v1s
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Despite claims of insurrection, they basically pushed
| their way into the building and then stood around. What
| stopped them from doing a lot worse
|
| ...was that the people they were fairly explicitly
| targeting escaped the mob, in some cases with very little
| margin, because of successful use of barricades, delaying
| tactics, and in one case deadly force.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| I'm trying to say this carefully, because what they
| actually did was not okay. People died.
|
| But the amount of "it could have been worse" attributable
| entirely to what the mob _didn 't_ do, is _large_. And I
| don 't think I'm wrong to attribute a lot of that to the
| ordinary deterrents being in effect.
| kodah wrote:
| Dunno about the term rednecks. Many of these people were from
| San Diego. Hardly any rednecks there.
| taylortrusty wrote:
| Uhh have you been to East San Diego County?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Clearly you haven't been here. There are plenty of areas in
| San Diego County that are rural and quite conservative.
| Despite Duncan Hunter being a literal felon, the 50th
| district still didn't flip this election.
| kodah wrote:
| Being a felon or conservative doesn't make you a redneck,
| and yes I've been there. I'm not surprised to see you only
| know the term in a pejorative sense.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Nothing I said was pejorative in any sense, but I
| understand that some people are very, very sensitive
| these days. Most of the time when a politician is removed
| from office, their party pays the price e.g. San Diego
| Mayor Bob Filner (D) was replaced by Kevin Faulconer (R),
| even though the City of San Diego is pretty heavily
| Democratic these days.
| kodah wrote:
| I don't really know what any of this has to do with the
| term "redneck" or how it was used. Me calling out the
| inappropriate use of the term redneck and your
| contextualization/juxtaposition of it isn't being
| sensitive. Feel free to walk back your statement in a
| more direct manner.
|
| In case you needed some reminding, since you're defending
| the term and its use:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redneck
| arrosenberg wrote:
| You weren't calling out the inappropriate use. You said
| we didn't have people who would meet that description in
| San Diego. You are completely incorrect about that, if
| one were so inclined to use the term. I wasn't taking a
| position on the term itself, just your lack of knowledge
| about the place I live. Don't hurt yourself getting down
| off that high horse.
| kodah wrote:
| I live in San Diego too. I'm also from the Midwest/South
| where there are rednecks that are Democrats. The term
| doesn't mean what you think it means (at least based on
| how the author used it and how you continue to
| contextualize it).
|
| I've also paid attention to the doxxing that's been going
| on in r/SanDiego and most (if not all) of these people
| live in the city and are business owners. They are hardly
| definitional rednecks.
| [deleted]
| codingprograms wrote:
| Election rules were changed in unorthodox ways due to a global
| pandemic. You have to admit that the election was unlike any
| other on recent memory.
|
| The losing side, given this unorthodox election, wanted some
| validation of results, as well as to legally challenge the way
| they were done (PA's changes).
|
| The response was one of derision and essentially shutting out
| the right from discourse. No effort was made a conciliation.
| This had the predictable effect of galvanizing people that
| there was indeed fraud.
|
| If you think that these people had no reason to be angry, you
| aren't paying attention. If you can understand the frustrations
| and lead up to the BLM movement, but don't even want to pay lip
| service to this, you are either a horrible person or stupid.
| Take your pick: evil, ignorant, or both?
| Fargren wrote:
| They had their day(s) in court. They were heard out. There
| were recounts. What else would have been needed? Was there
| any amicable resolution that didn't involve Trump getting
| elected? If the alternatives are Trump is elected or there is
| violence, this is not democracy.
| codingprograms wrote:
| It's a violation of the constitution for an individual
| state to change voting laws like that
| switch007 wrote:
| How did the right get "shut out"? The entirety of the right?
| That to me seems a quite hilarious claim when the President
| up until quite recently had a huge platform on Twitter.
|
| Validation of the result? Beyond all the official counts and
| recounts? I'm confused.
|
| Also your last paragraph was completely uncalled for.
| zo1 wrote:
| One can't point to a definitive set of facts that proves
| the right was "shut out" completely. Because they weren't
| all shut out and they weren't (for now) supposedly singled-
| out and "shut out" because they republican/right-leaning.
| They had "plausible" and "official" reasons for doing the
| things they did in each case.
|
| What did occur was a lot of little things and disparate
| things that had a huge dampening effect on the mobilization
| of discussion and questioning of details. And this has been
| happening for way before the election results were even
| out, it's been going on for years with a steady escalation.
|
| There was also the constant repetitive narrative pushing,
| specific language and tone by reporters, activists and
| politicians that essentially gave "official" and "quotable"
| legitimacy to potentially-questionable election results,
| and gave plausible excuses/cover to de-legitimize and
| conspiracy-blame any criticisms of the election results.
| This stuff is downright scary, and a good chunk of the
| people not seeing it are the ones that are (for now) in the
| "good books" of whoever is _overall_ in charge of driving
| the narrative and controlling public discourse. Right now,
| the left /Democratic party is in said good books.
|
| Look how the discussion is so widely and suddenly revolving
| around conflating this protest with insurrection even
| though it was essentially a fart in the grand scheme of
| things, and implying that there is a huge overlap between
| right/republican/conservative individuals and
| "racists/white-supremacists". It's laying the ground-work
| to make it legitimate and acceptable to assume/claim that
| republicans are racists among other things. Next up we'll
| have dehumanization, firings and overall de-platforming
| because said protestors were "terrorists" due to their
| participation. The event will be labelled as a "coup
| attempt" and the storming of the building was a "terrorist
| attack". And if you question any of these accepted facts
| (because hey all news reports labelled it as such) you too
| will be de-platformed, ostracized and called a terrorist-
| sympathizer or a "something-denier" (hint look at the anti
| covid-lockdown protests for an example).
| mberning wrote:
| You are 100% correct. The attitude on display in the parent
| comment is the same type of rhetoric you see everywhere, and
| it is not winning over anybody "on the other side".
| filoeleven wrote:
| PA's changes were not challenged when they were first signed
| into law in 2019. That was the time to act if there was a
| good-faith concern about them. The fact that the GOP waited
| until it would cause problems with votes already counted / in
| transit, and therefore undermine faith in the election, is
| further evidence that that was their goal in the first place.
| codingprograms wrote:
| It's a violation of the constitution for an individual
| state to change voting laws like that
| pseudalopex wrote:
| "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for
| Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each
| State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at
| any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as
| to the Places of chusing Senators."
|
| Which federal law do you think they violated?
| camel_Snake wrote:
| show me where.
| loceng wrote:
| There are poll watchers from both parties - it's a
| role/position you apply beforehand to become a poll watcher.
| Their arrogance of the system, where in fact they all
| themselves could become poll watchers to make sure there
| isn't fraud, isn't a valid reason for them to be angry -
| though it's understandable that they would be angry with the
| propaganda they've been fed, when instead of they were told
| that there were Republican poll watchers at ALL of the
| polling stations - then their reaction would be "oh.. okay."
| Maybe if they didn't believe it then they themselves could
| work as a poll watcher to see for themselves. Likewise there
| were people saying exactly what I have - however it's highly
| unlikely the people watching Fox News (or other) would be
| putting that messages out, so who's at blame? Arguably the
| treasonous Republicans trying to start a civil war and
| mainstream media channels who are inciting themselves. In
| this circumstance, yes, it's predictable - but please do tell
| how you reach the ignorant people who will only listen to
| very specific sources and have primed for years, decades, to
| think Democrats are evil - and that the election is rigged,
| that is it's only rigged if their pick doesn't win.
| codingprograms wrote:
| It's a violation of the constitution for an individual
| state to change voting laws like that
| _0ffh wrote:
| True, but when has the truth ever stopped a politician?
| Orou wrote:
| HNers: Are you anticipating any sort of 'pendulum effect' where
| we over-correct for our present situation in the new Democratic
| executive and legislature, specifically in the area of
| surveillance and privacy?
|
| What changes do you expect to have happen in the next year or two
| in this area? Are you taking any steps regarding your own privacy
| based on your predictions?
| eplanit wrote:
| The over-correction will be terrible. The Left has embraced
| authoritarianism, so this is a grand opportunity for them. They
| don't want to (nor now do they have to) negotiate or do
| anything "incremental". They want radical change, and the
| powers of the state to enforce it (environmental and social
| justice will be prominent). The idiots who perpetrated 1/6/21
| have put us in an awful place.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| Feeds into the conspiracy theories that it was all
| orchestrated by the left. Sets them up perfectly to crack
| down hard on their opponents.
| beerandt wrote:
| Maybe not orchestrated, but allowed to escalate and be
| taken advantage of.
|
| Take a dive when attacked and play the sympathy card.
| watwut wrote:
| I love how the issue is "the left does not negotiate" after
| years where right blocks any proposal from left on principle.
| And "the Left has embraced authoritarianism" ... right after
| when right decided that overturning elections is what they
| are entitled at.
| rconti wrote:
| It doesn't seem they needed any additional surveillance to stop
| this. Just adequate security staff for a pre-planned rally of
| very angry people that they already knew about. They plan for
| this kind of thing all the time. This time, they failed.
|
| I see the most likely initiatives of the new administration to
| revolve around reining in the powers of the presidency.
| gred wrote:
| No administration ever "reigns in" the powers of the
| administration. This is always a priority and talking point
| of the party out of power, regardless of party. As soon as
| you are in power, you exploit and expand on the precedents
| set by the previous administration. The only very small
| exception I can even think of was Trump's one-in, two-out
| regulation policy [1].
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/waynecrews/2018/10/23/trump-
| exc...
| stogxx wrote:
| The media pretends that this is unprecendented and willfully
| forgets the events of last year when antifa forcefully took a
| federal courthouse in Portland. They also ignore the general
| carnage of last year - violence and arson directed at business
| owners and people following the death of George Floyd. When
| viewed side by side, the double standards shown by the press is
| staggering
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The media pretends that this is unprecendented
|
| It is.
|
| > forgets the events of last year when antifa forcefully took a
| federal courthouse in Portland.
|
| A federal courthouse isn't the national Capitol, and the
| courthouse wasn't targeted specifically because officials were
| present and inspired in part by public calls to execute
| particular officials and in part by a direct call by the a
| defeated candidate as part of an ongoing campaign to reverse
| election results.
|
| > They also ignore the general carnage of last year - violence
| and arson directed at business owners and people following the
| death of George Floyd.
|
| No, in fact comparison of the events and the law enforcement
| responses is common in the media, even though the coup attempt
| is still portrayed as an unprecedented event. So the claim that
| the events of last summer are "ignored" by the media is simply
| false.
| beerandt wrote:
| Scotus confirmation protests were however, exactly the same,
| but for the capital police reaction and escalation.
|
| The admitted intent was to intimidate senators votes.
|
| One event met resistance and and things escalated. The other
| saw federal agents kneel in support and open the doors.
| [deleted]
| stateofnounion wrote:
| More https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/20/politics/congress-protests-
| br...
| tstrimple wrote:
| Did "antifa" force their way in past police officers while
| beating them and spraying them with pepper spray? Did they
| break windows and try to climb across barriers with secret
| service on the other side with guns drawn? Were they chanting
| about heads on pikes or about hanging Pence? Are you so
| completely biased that you think an group of protestors taking
| over an empty building without force is somehow equivalent to a
| group of people attacking police and literally breaking into a
| building occupied by congress while chanting about and actually
| performing violence?
| bebopcowboy wrote:
| No, they just burned down hundreds of already struggling
| small businesses while the media widely celebrated it.
| mwfunk wrote:
| There's gobs of intelligence on what was about to happen, what
| was happening, and what might yet be about to happen, all out
| there in the open on social media. I'm way more worried about the
| complete and utter lack of using existing intelligence that was
| served up on a silver platter and continues to be. That
| completely destroys any argument for expanding surveillance right
| there, without even considering human rights or legal angles. If
| they can't even act on what's given to them, or what they already
| know, maybe that should get the laser focus for the indefinite
| future.
| touchmystereo wrote:
| Of course it does justify expanding surveillance. The Capitol
| riots caused a mild discomfort in very important Democratic
| politicians, which basically equates it with 9/11.
|
| In contrast, many months long BLM riots, while they resulted in
| many deaths, made thousands of people unsafe and caused billions
| of dollars of damage, weren't nearly as important.
|
| Why? Because they were controlled by the Democratic establishment
| and only affected working- and middle-class people, whom those
| politicians barely consider human. So obviously they didn't see a
| need for legislation or even condemnation. In fact, they seen the
| riots as a good thing.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > The Capitol riots caused a mild discomfort in very important
| Democratic politicians...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-extremists/u-s-...
|
| > Reuters photographer Jim Bourg, who was photographing
| protesters trying to break down doors to the Capitol building,
| said he heard three older white men in red "Make America Great
| Again" caps talking about finding Vice President Mike Pence to
| hang him from a tree as a "traitor."
|
| > Security agents rushed Pence from the Senate chamber after
| protesters breached the Capitol building.
|
| (There's video evidence of the crowd yelling "Hang Mike Pence",
| incidentally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW718KRYDtU)
| bebopcowboy wrote:
| Oh no! Politicians were afraid of their constituents!
|
| Meanwhile normal citizens just spent the entire summer having
| their livelihoods destroyed as the media and corporations
| cheered on the perpetrators.
| JarlUlvi wrote:
| I don't agree.
|
| Similar to the Jan 6 Trump event, many peaceful BLM protest
| marches were conflated with the simultaneous violent riots. We
| need to make better distinction between peaceful marching, and
| wholesale looting and arson.
|
| Now Antifa has been a violent, murderous group for as long as I
| can remember, but they've gotten a pass. Because of a complicit
| media, the antifa DA in Oregon, tacit approval by Democrat
| pols, and financial/legal aid. They are the shock troops of the
| Democrats after all.
| aklemm wrote:
| Protect the Capitol or the point is moot. This is more of a
| fundamental dilemma that most are admitting right now.
| b-g-m wrote:
| In 2020 I wanted DC to start looking at smart-city cameras. I
| have been living in DC for nearly 10 years and watched the crime
| in the area go up alarmingly during the quarantine. People being
| robbed in broad daylight, Porch pirates, Arsons, burglary, auto
| theft - not to mention other threats and hazards in the capital
| go on without being apprehended. I am specifically interested in
| the smart-city Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) cameras which
| could identify sick people, terrorists, gun shots, and all other
| kinds of hazards, threats and security issues.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Defund the police" folks would point out that the increase in
| crime likely stems from an ineffective safety net during the
| pandemic and the ensuing economic difficulties it has caused.
| scrose wrote:
| I spent a brief amount time working with smart city tech. You
| might be surprised just how many cameras and sensors already
| exist that are monitoring you at any moment as you walk down
| the street. The issue usually isn't that there's no evidence
| for crimes, it's that investigating those mostly petty crimes,
| outside of secure areas is an extremely low priority for police
| departments. For example, I've had the police reject my video
| evidence of a hit and run where the driver admitted to it on
| camera, because they didn't want to spend resources
| investigating something that didn't result in a death.
|
| I stopped working with smart city tech because I felt there's
| only two realistic directions it can go: Excessive surveillance
| by the police, or excessive surveillance by people whose only
| interest is selling whatever data they can collect about you in
| public spaces to advertisers and other 3rd parties.
| joubert wrote:
| Crime statistics for DC: 2020 vs 2019
|
| https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance
| etcet wrote:
| The breach of the capitol building is an embarrassment. There's
| not reinforced glass on the first floor windows? The secured
| interior is 3 cops in front of a wooden door with plate glass
| windows? And those cops just kinda slinked away letting a woman
| breach it and get insta killed? The outside perimeter is just a
| few cops in front of some fencing? What a fucking failure.
| tstrimple wrote:
| We've seen what the capital looks like when leftists protest.
| The security was intentionally lax and the president
| intentionally restricted national guard response. It was so
| easy because there were people inside helping them out.
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/ap-fact-check-trum...
| thakoppno wrote:
| > The Pentagon said Miller approved the request without
| speaking with the White House because he had gotten direction
| from the president days earlier to do whatever he deemed
| necessary with the Guard.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Did you read everything or just try to cherry pick
| something to try to spread misinformation?
|
| "Army leaders say the delay in the movement of Guard troops
| to the Capitol was because the initial agreement largely
| limited those forces to checkpoints and Metro stations and
| *stipulated they would not go to the Capitol*. As a result,
| authorities had to get approval for the new mission, then
| call Guard members to the armory, brief them and get them
| their riot gear, and then send them to the Capitol."
| beerandt wrote:
| They literally took over the Senate building for hours during
| the scotus confirmation, snuck in restricted areas to harass
| senators, took selfies in offices while refusing to leave,
| and tried to block hallways and elevators, all with the
| stated intention of intimidating senators into changing their
| votes.
|
| Zero resistance from the Police and only arrested the people
| who still refused to leave hours later.
| throwaway201103 wrote:
| _Especially_ on a day when there was a large protest planned
| for a vote taking place. It 's a government building and it
| should be reasonably open to the public but common sense needs
| to raise its head at some point. Securing the building for a
| few hours would not have been unreasonable.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Do you think it should be a fortress? That's sad. It's supposed
| to be an accessible place where your representatives work, not
| a military base.
| etcet wrote:
| I think it should be reasonably defensible. It's not just a
| failure of the architecture though. The tactics used were
| mostly ineffective. Defensive forces were positioned thinly
| with few real blockades. I saw one instance of police
| blocking an entrance through sheer mass and it was effective.
| The cops could have been done the same in the interior
| hallways instead of giving up their spread out weak
| positions. This would have prevented the use of firearms.
|
| If you can stomach it, I ask everyone to watch the full lead
| up to the shot. It is an absolute failure of policing. Start
| at 37:20 on
| https://banned.video/watch?id=5ff6857e00bac0328da8e888 and
| yes it's NSFL (shot at 39:10).
| barbacoa wrote:
| Imagine if we had a 2008 Mumbai style terror attack with armed
| and organized gunman. We'd be f'ed.
| bane wrote:
| What's really interesting in the Capitol attack is how the
| terrorists ended up simply surveilling themselves, posting their
| videos and pictures onto their own social media with their own
| identifying information attached. You don't need a police state
| when the enemy is this stupid.
| stogxx wrote:
| Since when is a shut-in an act of terrorism? As far as I'm
| aware these protesters at the Capitol didn't kill or attempt to
| kill anyone. Yes, they damaged government property. Many will
| face prosecution for this.
|
| Supporters of BLM have committed far worse acts in recent years
| but they are not labelled as terrorists. The only people that
| died at this event were the protestors - one at least was
| unarmed and murdered by a police officer. The whole thing is on
| video.
| bane wrote:
| They killed a police officer.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| That tells me that they didn't think what they were doing was
| something to hide. Definitely stupid, but also probably not an
| attempted coup if that's the case. That is, I don't think the
| protestors themselves were attempting a coup.
| ben509 wrote:
| A coup is when state actors illegally overthrow other state
| actors. Most coups are pulled off by militaries, e.g. how
| Pinochet got into power.
|
| This would be an uprising; it's being called a "coup" because
| uprising sounds sympathetic.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I still think it's possible someone was attempting a coup
| but that the protestors were not in on it.
| beerandt wrote:
| If so, I struggle to see what the desired outcome would
| have been at the capital.
|
| But people need to be careful, because by saying it was a
| coup, it normalizes the concept for those who saw
| Wednesday as a good faith protest march, regardless of
| what it's now perceived as.
|
| Changing/ shifting the definition of words has behavioral
| consequences.
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| The reaction here is not about "what" -- we've seen far
| worse happen this year, in cities across the country.
|
| It's about "who": people with power have finally been
| impacted by the craziness they foster.
|
| Welcome DC, to the crazy the rest of us have dealt with for
| a year!
| TT3351 wrote:
| They didn't think they had anything to hide because police
| organizations and state AGs helped incite the event. This is
| a typical characteristic of right-wing, white militants. They
| do not see their actions as vigilantism because they
| earnestly believe their actions carry the weight of law.
| Veterans and police officers were among the insurrectionists
| in the Capitol.
| gumby wrote:
| Of course they were, they just didn't believe they'd see
| significant resistance because they believed the vast
| majority of people agreed with them.
| o_p wrote:
| Its a really big stretch to call a mob of unarmed people who
| took a bunch of selfies a terrorist attack. It was just a riot
| bane wrote:
| They were armed.
| bra-ket wrote:
| one man's "terrorist" is another man's "freedom fighter".
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