You say violence is violence, yet I bet you have no problem with criminals being put in jail, i.e. their freedoms being violently removed from them.
The state should have the monopoly on violence. Then, instead of everyone doing violence, we have certain, appointed people given the responsibility who can then be trained and monitored. This is part and parcel of the Rule of Law. Certainly, this system isn't perfect. But you only have to live in a country or region without Rule of Law to know that it's much preferable to improve the system, than to abandon it.
Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard
Are you going to speak for the elderly woman who was beaten by a 2x4, or her husband who was beaten when he came to protect her? Are you going to speak for the independent owner of the vintage clothing store in LA who was preparing to re-open and had his windows smashed and his inventory stolen?
Can you determine who will pay, and what "price" they will pay?
Have you ever criticized someone for their callous opinions on these matters, because it doesn't affect them so much? Well, perhaps the tenor of your opinion is connected to your not being affected so much.
Your circumstances just happen to afford you that privilege.
Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite the perpetrators being known, and the majority of the population is apparently utterly fine with this - even you are merely saying that this situation "needs improvement", like you're marking homework. "The police only murdered one person in cold blood today rather than two, have a cookie!"
I've had a friend in an EU country have the police break their bones and leave them locked up without medical treatment for weeks, because they were an Eastern European refugee. This is what "Rule of Law" looks like - it looks like entire populations being utterly terrorised by a sanctioned force that they have absolutely no power to stop.
Law is a bunch of words on a piece of paper, it has no power to rule. We leave that to organisations (the police, prosecutor's office, courts and prisons) with a history and present of institutionalised racism and no accountability to the communities they terrorise.
Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite the perpetrators being known
After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop. What's happening with the violence and the vandalism is just muddying the waters. It's almost as if the purpose isn't to make things better, but to foment a race war to destabilize the USA.
> After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop.
No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results, like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability. The same as all the other times the police have murdered people. It's not like this is a new thing that people are just waking up to.
No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results
Can you substantiate that, or is it just your opinion? You can justify the imposition of your opinion on everyone? (Through violent intimidation?)
like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability
This has happened, incrementally. Can you design a system, ground-up that will work as well as the current one? I suspect that's far more likely than iterating on the current one. That's also an opinion.
Do you have statistics that show that? Are more cops charged and imprisoned after murdering unarmed people every year, or does the number of unarmed murdered people go down, at all? People who die mysteriously in custody?
It's getting off topic, but it's worth pointing out that all the examples you're about to drum up may not have rule of law, but they certainly have "law," in that they have someone holding a monopoly on violence and the willingness to use it to meet their ends.
I think that's an important distinction to make between such a place, and a place of anarchy or a commune, which aren't necessarily places that don't have "rule of law" and aren't necessarily hubs of raw violent chaos.
So your solution to "people are evil and violent" is to... give a bunch of people carte blanche to be evil and commit violence with no accountability or recourse available to their victims?
> what exactly is your counter proposal? the united communes of america?
That doesn't sound too bad to me.
> people are evil and violent
It seems that isn't the really the case, it seems only a small minority of people are, but unfortunately violence allows aggregation of power which allows more violence which allows...
> anarchist want to destroy the current system flaws and all for a vacuum of justice
Not aware of any anarchists that want whatever a "vacuum of justice" is.
You know as well as I do that there are alternatives to a contemporary legal system that are not a bunch of roving warlords. The current system is not the only system that can possibly work.
Theorising on alternatives to the contemporary Western legal system have been done for the last century by leftists, and a lot of that gets put into practice on a small scale where it can be. I've been involved in some of it myself. Part of the goal is to prevent creating permanent organisations, such as the police and the court and the prisons, that have a structural incentive to protect themselves against a community trying to hold them accountable.
In fact, note that the concept of a jury is intended to work this way (although is missing many elements, and exists under the permanent organisation of the court) - a temporary organisation gathering to find justice, then dispersing.
Unfortunately it's difficult to tell the exact outcome of implementing any of it on a wider scale, as the times leftism has actually been in power have largely been during times of war where a lot of theory was thrown out the window, or using leftist messaging to implement something closer to a dictatorship. All we know is that a lot of it works when implemented in our own communities.
why dont you think the dictatorship is the outcome of implementing at scale? e.g. if private property must be eliminated to have a commune, and most people wont give up their private property willingly, what other way is there to eliminate private property at scale except via dictatorship and martial law?
This is the consequence of corruption, loss of trust and loss of civil society. And I see no ethical or moral incentive for the second class to participate, because it's a lie that the rule of law applies equally. It's a farce. Just admit what it really is, rather than keep lying about it.
The notion that peaceful protest will be respected? The president and vice president have asserted it. Yet both of them castigated Colin Kaepernick's peaceful protests. They don't have any respect for peaceful protest. Kaepernick was subject to ridicule, his livelihood destroyed, and threatened with ejection from his own country, for his peaceful protest, by the sitting POTUS.
Amy Cooper insists she's not a racist. But used her whiteness as a weapon, and a black man's blackness as a deficit, knowing full well with her threat against him that this same racial animus would be applied by the police. That's why she made the threat. What's more striking about the story? Her lie about the events that were to have transpired? Or her truth? White power. White power. White power.
There is no good reason for thinking people to respect American rule of law from an ethical or moral standpoint. Only respect it the same way black Americans, minorities, poor have come to: fear of its power.
The system isn't just imperfect. It isn't what it purports to be. And it isn't accountable. Why defend it? Where's even the pride in defending it? Where could legitimacy even come from?
> Are you going to speak for the elderly woman who was beaten by a 2x4, or her husband who was beaten when he came to protect her? Are you going to speak for the independent owner of the vintage clothing store in LA who was preparing to re-open and had his windows smashed and his inventory stolen?
Sure, I will - it's a shame that the cops refused to follow the science on the subject and deescelate protests. Instead they chose to fire on peaceful protesters and kick off a riot.
It's not like this kind of shit isn't studied. What article are we commenting on right now? This information has been available for a very, very long time.
So, to everyone that has been harmed by the police, directly (having their eyes shot out, being choked to death), or indirectly (property damage due to an avoidable riot), I think the police should be held responsible.
> > Are you going to speak for the elderly woman who was beaten by a 2x4, or her husband who was beaten when he came to protect her? Are you going to speak for the independent owner of the vintage clothing store in LA who was preparing to re-open and had his windows smashed and his inventory stolen?
> Sure, I will
Easy for you to say. You are in the privileged position of only having lost some body work on your motorcycle. Do you really think they'd consent to your "speaking for them?"
it's a shame that the cops refused to follow the science on the subject and deescelate protests. Instead they chose to fire on peaceful protesters and kick off a riot.
The bad people here are the extremists who are egging on the violence, while creating the devious tactical position of making it very hard for the police to distinguish who is who.
So, to everyone that has been harmed by the police, directly (having their eyes shot out, being choked to death), or indirectly (property damage due to an avoidable riot), I think the police should be held responsible.
Yes. And how about someone speaks for you, as you say you would for others? You are going to pay for the inventory of the shop. You are going to pay for the medical bills of the shop owner and his wife, plus pain and suffering. How about that?
> Then, instead of everyone doing violence, we have certain, appointed people given the responsibility who can then be trained and monitored
What if those people don't do it according to the law or in a just manner? We just all say: "oh well, they have a monopoly on force, so nothing to be done"?
You probably think it was quite rude to separate from the British at all. Perhaps we should go back to being a colony, since the separation was actually a complete violation of the crown's monopoly on violence!
The state should have the monopoly on violence. Then, instead of everyone doing violence, we have certain, appointed people given the responsibility who can then be trained and monitored. This is part and parcel of the Rule of Law. Certainly, this system isn't perfect. But you only have to live in a country or region without Rule of Law to know that it's much preferable to improve the system, than to abandon it.
Yup, and I have the receipts to prove it: my motorcycle was vandalized in Oakland during the protests. A small price to pay for unsung voices being heard
Are you going to speak for the elderly woman who was beaten by a 2x4, or her husband who was beaten when he came to protect her? Are you going to speak for the independent owner of the vintage clothing store in LA who was preparing to re-open and had his windows smashed and his inventory stolen?
Can you determine who will pay, and what "price" they will pay?
Have you ever criticized someone for their callous opinions on these matters, because it doesn't affect them so much? Well, perhaps the tenor of your opinion is connected to your not being affected so much.
Your circumstances just happen to afford you that privilege.