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US Politics: Burning Down the Country


ThinkerX

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1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

No BIRD!s will be killed during these protests.

I sincerely hope so.

Is a police officer who has never killed anyone, let alone a PoC, innocent, or is he guilty because he's a police officer? Is a black protestor who jumps on a vehicle and smashes the windows and sets it on fire innocent because he's black? Or if he throws a molotov cocktail at police? We all seem to think anyone white who smashes anything is automatically guilty (and they may be guilty as sin, but that's not the point).

I don't think I believe in the 'few bad apples' argument with regard to the police, there's definitely rot there. But is that not true for some of the rioters too? Not all the protesters are peaceful. I saw images of lots of black guys smashing windows too. The weapon of choice seems to be the shovel.

That video of the police car that drove into the crowd is terrible, but people were already jumping on the hood, weren't they? Don't you think they expected the shovels and the skate boards and the bats were coming out to smash in the windows...and then what? Dragged out and killed? A molotov cocktail to be tossed in the SUV?

This is not going to end well.

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13 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I suspect you are going to have to define innocent. 

How about “non-combatants”?

Every time I think it is justifiable to start killing people I think about this clip. 

In every war, unless you plan to commit genocide eventually you need to sit down and talk with those you found unconscionable to talk to.  

How many dead do we need before we can talk with the people we’re fighting?

 

https://youtu.be/BJP9o4BEziI

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30 minutes ago, Arakan said:

The fundamental point is: America is a broken system, rotten to its core. You can’t  reform something which is rotten to its core. 
 

the core fundament of the USA: greed, inequality, injustice, exploitation. Racism and perpetual war are tools to secure that this inequality will never change. Divide and conquer. 

Greatest country in the world, land of the free yadayada, nothing more than marketing slogans. 
 

I say: burn this house down to its fundament and build up something better.

 

The time has come.

 

 

Was starting from scratch how they did it in your country? Explain very carefully how you go about burning everything down and then starting over. And how should we go about starting from scratch. What should our new institutions look like and be.

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32 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How many innocent dead are you cool with to achieve this goal?

But what about the innocent people who are being killed now (directly or indirectly) ?
At what point does a system become so twisted that its overthrow (and the deaths that such an overthrow might cause) becomes legitimate?

It's kind of a rhetorical question Scot. The point is simply that there are limits to the "no violence" or "no condoning violence" line.
Also, "those [we] find unconscionable" do not easily "sit down and talk." Violence should be rejected, but I am not certain that radical change can happen without the threat of violence.

3 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Was starting from scratch how they did it in your country?

Isn't Arakan German? Because I'm pretty sure Germany did start from scratch -or close enough- in 1945...

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1 minute ago, Rippounet said:

Isn't Arakan German? Because I'm pretty sure Germany did start from scratch -or close enough- in 1945...

So all their institutions, laws, and culture were completely demolished. I don't think so.

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As there are too many Germans on the board already, I really shouldn't answer for them.

However, what is interesting about Germany is how it was made. It is a more recent state than what the US is, and when it was formed it was (among other things) on the idea of a Volk sharing a culture (language was an indicator, IIRC). 

I guess it still was quite different culture-wise, so in that sense the nation was a melting pot, but some sort of idea of German-ness did arise, and some sort of German-ness still exist, though different from what existed in 1860.

Point? No big point. Culture is constantly changing, and I think that revolutions are inferior to gradual change on the whole - though sometimes the grades in gradual change should be quite big. 

 

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11 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Was starting from scratch how they did it in your country? Explain very carefully how you go about burning everything down and then starting over. And how should we go about starting from scratch. What should our new institutions look like and be.

Don't entice a German to burn things down now to start shit over in a new way.

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5 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

So all their institutions, laws, and culture were completely demolished. I don't think so.

You don't think the institutions, laws, and culture of the third reich were completely demolished in 1945?

Also, didn't the US army organize tours of concentration/death camps and or mandatory projections of their horrors throughout the country for the German people to accept i) the consequences of the Nazi ideology ii) the reality of those consequences ?

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The left-leaning US states should leave the US and join Canada instead, and have the Canadian government dismantle and rebuild their police forces (and health care systems) from scratch. The right-leaning states would never agree to that, but you just have to accept you can't save everyone.

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I think this blaming on "outsiders" is the most telling aspect of this.  So, it's "outsiders" from your state.  Ok.  Says, like, every state.  That makes no sense.  It's not outsiders.  It is all of us.  And I think even my lazy ass brother that just plays video games.  Even him, he's ready to to say, this is all of us.

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6 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

You don't think the institutions, laws, and culture of the third reich were completely demolished in 1945?

No I don't. Just because their system of government changed and they adopted a constitutional system does not mean the rest of their institutions. laws, customs, industry,and culture were completely demolished.

Hey look I'm all for making some big changes in the US, as we do have some really fucked up problems, but this idea of burn everything down and start over is nonsense.

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26 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I sincerely hope so.

Is a police officer who has never killed anyone, let alone a PoC, innocent, or is he guilty because he's a police officer? Is a black protestor who jumps on a vehicle and smashes the windows and sets it on fire innocent because he's black? Or if he throws a molotov cocktail at police? We all seem to think anyone white who smashes anything is automatically guilty (and they may be guilty as sin, but that's not the point).

I don't think I believe in the 'few bad apples' argument with regard to the police, there's definitely rot there. But is that not true for some of the rioters too? Not all the protesters are peaceful. I saw images of lots of black guys smashing windows too. The weapon of choice seems to be the shovel.

That video of the police car that drove into the crowd is terrible, but people were already jumping on the hood, weren't they? Don't you think they expected the shovels and the skate boards and the bats were coming out to smash in the windows...and then what? Dragged out and killed? A molotov cocktail to be tossed in the SUV?

This is not going to end well.

Of what institution is a black protester a part of? Is a black protester (or A protester) part of a system of opression? 

The cop is part of the system of opression. 

And comparing the violence of protests to the violence of cops is ridiculous.  Idem to the comparison of the few bad apples, like, what??. 

The violence of a riot is no the same as the violence of the state. 

Why are people braking windows? Is it becouse they are rotten? And if they are, why is that? 

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1 minute ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Why are people braking windows? Is it becouse they are rotten? And if they are, why is that? 

According to what has been said earlier in the thread, the people breaking the windows are white supremacists who want to frame BLM and start a race war. I'd say that's quite rotten.

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5 minutes ago, dbergkvist said:

The left-leaning US states should leave the US and join Canada instead, and have the Canadian government dismantle and rebuild their police forces (and health care systems) from scratch. The right-leaning states would never agree to that, but you just have to accept you can't save everyone.

Not the smartest suggestion in the world. The Saskatchewan police had a practice of picking up native people in city streets and then driving them out of town, in winter, when it was -30. The Nova Scotia mounties were accused of ignoring complaints about the guy who killed 22 people last month because he was a white guy. There are demonstrations going on in Toronto this weekend because the police have been accused of throwing a black woman off a balcony this past week (they say she jumped). Police are police. Everywhere.

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3 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Of what institution is a black protester a part of? Is a black protester (or A protester) part of a system of opression? 

The cop is part of the system of opression. 

And comparing the violence of protests to the violence of cops is ridiculous.  Idem to the comparison of the few bad apples, like, what??. 

The violence of a riot is no the same as the violence of the state. 

Why are people braking windows? Is it becouse they are rotten? And if they are, why is that? 

I was responding to Ser Scott who asked about innocents dying. I asked him to define innocent.  Are you suggesting all police are guilty and therefore must die?

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7 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Not the smartest suggestion in the world. The Saskatchewan police had a practice of picking up native people in city streets and then driving them out of town, in winter, when it was -30. The Nova Scotia mounties were accused of ignoring complaints about the guy who killed 22 people last month because he was a white guy. There are demonstrations going on in Toronto this weekend because the police have been accused of throwing a black woman off a balcony this past week (they say she jumped). Police are police. Everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country

The US has 28.4 killings per 10 million people, whereas Canada has 9.7

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8 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

No I don't. Just because their system of government changed and they adopted a constitutional system does not mean the rest of their institutions. laws, customs, industry,and culture were completely demolished.

Hey look I'm all for making some big changes in the US, as we do have some really fucked up problems, but this idea of burn everything down and start over is nonsense.

I guess it depends on what you mean by burning everything down and starting over. Obviously no one should seriously be suggesting that it's even possible to completely obliterate American culture and customs. But in the political realm, would it be such a terrible idea to scrap our absurd 18th century system of government that has us locked in a two party system that seems utterly unresponsive to the will of the people and incapable of meeting basically any of the formidable challenges we're facing? This kind of starting over has plenty of historical precedent. 

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Just now, Fragile Bird said:

Then you should refer them to the British, who have a rate of .5. Our's is 19 times higher.

If the left-leaning states prefer to join the UK instead of Canada, that's fine too. I just thought closer is better.

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