The Glade 4.0

I'm concerned about layering riots on top of a pandemic. Seems just swell. /s


Not particularly interested in debating the civil rights situation so much as conversation about how this might go if we don't get things a bit under control. I'm worried we're headed into a major situation.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I'm sick of hearing about Trump, period. Jesus **** Christ, it's like every time a Democrat gets into the White House, they think the GOP has been destroyed and will never win another election again for the rest of time.

I was betting on riots in June, and they came a little early. I didn't think it would be over police brutality, I thought it would be general lockdown frustration. I can't help but think that the lockdown did contribute to the level of violence we're seeing.

It's important to remember that there are worse things than Wuhan Flu. The predicted death toll, while a big number, was never as high as, say, a Great Depression. Once we got up over 10% unemployment, we should have seen the writing on the wall. We were never willing to have an honest conversation about the severity of the beer bug compared to shuttering businesses. The entire pandemic, from start to finish, was only ever about declaring one's political tribal allegiance. The proof is in the sudden disappearance of kung flu from the national discourse - gone is the righteous indignation towards mass-murdering psychopaths putting the public at risk now that people with the correct political opinions want to assemble, however businesses are still not allowed to reopen.

Locking down temporarily was okay when we were scared and didn't know what we were facing. As we learned more, we needed to tailor a more nuanced response. We didn't do that. We don't have a concept of varying degrees of "bad." We only have "okay" and "apocalyptic." People stopped taking the virus seriously because politicians and the media never acted like serious people.

So the riots. All of the data shows that the virus isn't as bad as we feared. The last figure I saw was about 1/3 people simply don't develop symptoms. Serious, and potentially deadly cases strongly correlate to pre-existing health conditions. The mortality rate among 16-25 year olds (the age demographic most likely to be rioting) is so small as to be nonexistent. Realistically, the rioters will never even notice they contracted the virus.

But maybe the virus is every bit as deadly as we feared, and more. If that's the that case, I suppose we have a bunch of radical communists that are going to die of the disease.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

I am fairly sure that the pandemic - or rather the economic effects of the pandemic - are a major driver OF the riots. In addition to the stress, increased drinking and drug use, and mental health issues you suddenly have 40 million or so unemployed people with A) nothing better to do, B) bills to pay, such that a TV set they can sell might stave off disaster a little longer and C) probably quite a bit of pent-up anger at the situation.



I do not think there IS a civil rights situation here; literally no one has argued that what happened to George Floyd was justified; the officers were all fired immediately, murder was charged within 96 hours, and the others have now been charged with accessory. George Floyd's civil rights were clearly violated - there is no reason to question that now, and it doesn't seem likely that there will be in the future. The system functioned correctly; if anything it was overzealous to the point of [url=jeopardizing the case against the officers]https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/new-floyd-murder-charges-will-be-tough-to-prove-and-may-imperil-good-cops/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=featured-writers&utm_term=first[/url].

As to a more general civil rights situation, I'll watch Joe Rogan for that, because frankly he's the only mature voice I hear out there any more, and I am convinced that what he's really demonstrating is that the appropriate place to have political discussions is on the jiu jitsu mats. (I really miss jiu jitsu with all the lockdowns)



We may be. What is alarming is not the rioting itself, but the excuses being made for it. We are seeing the end result of treating everything as a crisis, and every crisis as an exercise in partisan politics and ONLY partisan politics. Much of the argument over COVID policy was exactly this; the particularly silly hydroxychloroquine argument was the top example: the idea that the efficacy of the drug has ANYTHING to do with whether Trump says anything about it is patently absurd and yet this assumption that it DID underpinned the entire controversy! Viruses and the drugs that treat them are not functions of politics and yet almost everything about both was treated as if it did, because our press, our politicians, and quite a few of us are simply not able to approach any problem any more except as a partisan exercise - even when that problem physically imposes itself upon us.

I strongly suspect we could have the Giant Meteor coming right at us and somehow CNN would be blaming Trump and Republicans and telling us how 10,000 megaton meteor impacts disproportionately affect minority communities when they destroy the entire continent, and FOX would be loudly telling us that the liberal establishment is responsible for the fact that gravity is an unforgiving sonofabitch. (Though to be fair, Sokol DID get a paper published arguing gravity is a social construct, so...)

I think we are heading for a major situation, but not the one people think we are. The crisis, right now, is one of state and local governments being more afraid of the press than they are of the rioters and insurrectionists. The Federal government isn't because Trump isn't, and that is because it is irrelevant what he does; if he were to outright resign the press would blame him for putting Mike Pence in charge. The narrative is all that matters; until the rioters actually burn down CNN HQ or something it is all that will matter because no crisis is really real to the media. Even being confined to his house did not get Chris Cuomo to realize that COVID is not a political actor.

The major situation we are heading for is when enough people realize the rioting is at their door and the government is not going to protect them, in enough places. People are going to protect themselves. Minneapolis city council is talking today about disbanding its police department. This is not a serious plan; it is proposing to take a very serious step with no plan whatsoever ("rethink public safety" is not a plan).

A lot of people who have been ***** for years about how policing gets done (from a number of different angles, and not necessarily angles that agree with each other) may be about to find out what it's like when there are none. Some states may be about to find out how expensive it really is to mobilize their entire National Guard so that political amateurs on a city council can propose ridiculous solutions to problems that are largely fictitious (not as in "there are no problems" but as in "you have completely misidentified the problem, because you want the problem to be what your ideology says it is")

There are two potential ways this really goes south: The government fails to protect citizens, they protect themselves, and then the government attempts to arrest or punish them for it. There's real danger here because we've already seen serious overreach with COVID restrictions; threatening to levy fines or jail people for what is normally lawful activity while releasing actual criminals from jail. It is rapidly becoming clear that there is a portion of our political establishment that is only going to attempt to enforce the law against law-abiding people - they have either bought into this idea that all actual enforcment of law is some sort of oppression, or else they are terrified of those who have.

The other way (it's two ways, but they are similar): Law Enforcement and/or National Guard simply stop obeying the commands of political leaders. This could look like a few things; I think the most likely is that law enforcement simply starts quitting en masse. I find the National Guard scenario much more far-fetched, but if National Guard Soldiers start getting killed and they are not allowed to deal forcefully with the insurrectionists, there will absolutely be serious problems. It is not just about "using the military on Americans"; the military ARE Americans, and the National Guard are part-timers who are citizens; they are not to be sacrificed to the violent whims of their fellow Americans because political leaders are more afraid of being called racists than of widespread looting and destruction.

Now, on the other hand this may burn itself out. Quite a few of these people are obviously not serious, do not care at all about George Floyd and are either using him as an excuse to snag a TV, or else as a way to feel morally righteous waving a sign around because there's nothing else to do with school out. There's some pretty ridiculous stuff out there, like 2 girls getting gently arrested in Ohio and trying to manufacture some sort of police brutality out of it by not "giving my sister her dialysis" (for diabetes; last I knew dialysis is not a diabetes treatment and is not something you carry around with you) or "giving her insulin; her blood sugar's low" (I am pretty sure that you do not give insulin for LOW blood sugar). There's also another thing out there about some rioter or protestor receiving a fairly minor leg injury and people putting a full-blown tourniquet on for it. There are a lot of people that are clearly out there just acting out what they see on TV or whatever some moron with a PhD in mad-at-everyone-studies taught them, and they'll eventually lose interest, or else they'll call it quits at the first sign of the mailed fist. Many of them have clearly never really experienced violence and will skeedadle promptly if things go beyond shouting and an occasional brick.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You were correct. It IS over lockdown frustration; police brutality is an excuse, not a reason.

Much of this is the end result of using "racism" and identity politics as a club to win arguments for decades, and a refusal to acknowledge societal progress on racial issues for fear of losing the issue as such a club. Press coverage really shows this; much of the press clearly is not taking this seriously, and it is just the crisis of the moment. There is a strong "this will never come to me; it's only a problem for the poor minorities I'm pretending to care about" element of it. No one would be arguing that looting isn't violence if it were happening to their house.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yea - people being out of work for 2.5 months or more doesn't exactly lend itself to a calm populace.


Looks like things in MOST cities are simmering down.

What I'm wondering now is, what are the "reasonable" demands of protestors are? Who are their voice? Or is this just a mob with no ask. One cannot negotiate with the mob. Provide a leader.

Thus far, the closest thing I've seen to actual (reasonable) demands are almost all baseline libertarian policy points from the last 30 years, and depending on how implemented.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Aside from Seattle outright declaring surrender of a police precinct, yes. It's starting to burn itself out; unfortunately the after-effects are going to be ugly.



I think that there is not a leader because what appears to be "the mob" is actually a collection of a number of mobs, none with any single leader, and who often have some incompatible views. The differences were being papered over for a little over a week, because everything (once again) was about Trump.

There's basically, I think, three sorts of "mob" out there: 1) The ones that are in the "I don't believe in anything; I'm just here <insert selection>" category, which range from "to get out of the house" up to either "to throw bricks and pretend it's a civil war" or "to get some phat lewt". 2) The spilling into the street of the combination of the SJW/woke brigade with the "I wanna be a socialist" brigade and 3) People who really are protesting what they see as "police brutality".

There's no leader because both ideas and demands are to inchoate to be led. Over the years, there's been plenty of egging on from behind by media, celebrities, politicians, activists, and a particularly unsavory sort of clergyman but no actual leadership - most "civil rights leaders" are not leading anything because there would need to be some definable, achievable goal to be led towards, and there clearly is not, on either the SJW/racial front or the socioeconomic front. On the SJW/racial front, even a hint of racial progress lessens the problem, and is unacceptable because it means the problem is no longer racist white people - and if it isn't, it's something else and that leads to uncomfortable places. On the socioeconomic front, it's a fantasy that we're somehow going to have all the good stuff we get from capitalism, but "more fair".

Maintaining the anger of an amorphous blob against an amorphous problem, though, can't last because sooner or later someone will seize on something tangible - in this case, "Defund the police!" This forced people to take sides on a particular policy approach, and one that had all of five minutes of thought put into it, if that. It was too much even for Bernie Sanders, and most responsible politicians, but it quickly gave away the game. If you were against it, you were on the "wrong side", but the problem is that being for it means being in favor of the obvious problems of having no law enforcement - and this is critical - AND the very uncomfortable reality that with no police, there is no police racism or police brutality to blame things on.

Some of the smarter members of the media quickly realized this (probably also worried they might have to start embracing those guns they hate so much, too, if it came to fruition) and tried to turn it into "well, it doesn't actually mean defund them, it means spend more money on social programs and maybe get some of it from police budgets." Sadly, the people advocating "Defind the police" are having none of it, and making it clear that they are using the words that mean what they are actually trying to say.

This is fundamentally un-leadable. It will not tolerate being led. That would imply the limitations of moving in a particular direction, towards particular goals, and excluding the others. Even more importantly, it implies actually removing the cause of the outrage, and the outrage is for its own sake. The mob is addicted to outrage. The would-be leaders have not led, they have only pushed for more outrage in fear of losing the motivating force that keeps these people aimed at their enemies, keeps the money rolling in, or whatever. It is totally out of control now; not necessarily in a physical sense (it CAN be controlled by force, because the lack of coherency means it is unable to effectively resist sufficient force), but politically and socially it is out of control - and it is spawning a real anger now among people not in the mob, but who are starting to realize that the mob really is willing to come for anyone who crosses it.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I wanted to address this separately, because I think it highlights something important - much of the disagreement over libertarian policy points I think is often a matter of implementation, and degree. I think, however, that some of the proposed implementations right now would distort these policy ideas beyond anything libertarians would recognize.

I think there are definitely avenues for policy change. Qualified immunity, while not the Death Star forcefield of accountability that some people seem to think (it does not shield from criminal charges, nor does it protect the department) has somehow been turned by the courts into a fairly ridiculous thing. Police unions are a significant problem; like QI they provide a valuable function - namely, helping officers defend themselves from accusations by criminals or community members that are clearly nonsense, either out of animosity or to distract from criminal behavior. What most people who don't like hearing this ignore is that it also forces management to be accountable rather than just fire and charge officers at the first sign of trouble. The generals should not be able to unload responsibility onto the privates. Yet the current form of police unions results in a financial feedback loop that inflates the cost of police, keeps politicians leashed to union demands, results in unweildy complaint systems that can't address real complaints (Minneapolis PD, from my understanding has had 2,600 citizen complaints in 10 years and taken action in 12 - I do not believe that less than 1% of citizen complaints are valid) and undermines public confidence.

I think there are a number of things that need to happen - some policy, and some more at the "meta-policy" level. If we want the police to change or behave differently, those who want to propose changes should state exactly what they want, and be able to articulate what the benefits and risks would be. The sure sign of an unserious proposal is the idea that it has no drawbacks. "The police need to be held to a higher standard!" (and similar tautologies) is not a proposal, it's a demand for extra-legal ex-post-facto retaliation for something someone doesn't like. The words "of behavior" belong on the back end of that sentence; otherwise it is not a demand for higher standards; it is a demand for no standards at all. It is not holding someone to a standard if you cannot articulate what the standard is, and the acknowledge it was met even if you don't like the consequences of it being met. There is a very reasonable expectation by the police that they will not be tried by Don Lemon on CNN when accused of misconduct, or by some outraged Twitter mob. The question should be "did misconduct occur, and if so, to what degree and what is the appropriate resolution?", not "How many views does it have on YouTube?" or "What will it mean for my re-election campaign?"

I don't know that the specific changes are really the important part. I do think that there are a number of things that will need to happen in any changes:
1) Police must be able to "buy in"; they need to know they will be credited when they stand up to misbehaving co-workers
2) They also must be able to rely on a process where they can receive a fair hearing; that malicious or retaliatory or frivolous complaints will be recognized and not held against them, and that the standards are the standards and will not abruptly change because of media-driven outrage
3) Management must not make hiring or work about "culture" or "fitting in" any longer; they must take responsibility for their decisions, training, resources, and policy decisions. If an officer is following policy, and policy is at fault, that's on management
4) Politicians must accept that they won't be able to rely on public-union funding loops any more

And one thing I think that has been missed:

5) Courts must accept more limitation in latitude to set case law. Standards such as "objectively reasonable" are simply too broad, and even for intelligent people with a good understanding, too hard to apply under pressure with little time to consider things. The practice of "we don't want to bind ourselves in the future" is part of what's created this problem, and if the courts cannot more clearly articulate themselves, the legislature must do it.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yea, goals have to be SMART, and we also have to look at policy impacts.

Personally I think we'd solve most of the problems with only 3 things that shouldn't be too controversial: remove qualified immunity, neutering of police unions in regard to disciplinary action protection, and mandatory national bodycams (including penalties and potential for presumption of guilt when cams are willfully turned off).

Then you get into the more controversial: end the drug war, "demilitarize" the police, and potentially even deweaponize the police (more of a British model).

What isn't helpful is broad phrasing like "community policing." Tell me oh champions of the downtrodden - what exactly does that mean?

Of course, there's the most extreme of libertarian positions (non anarchic libertarians, that is) - privatization of the police.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I'm not sure qualified immunity needs to be entirely removed, mainly because it;s proper purpose is protection in areas where the law really is unclear. The problem with it mainly is in what the courts have made of it - it's grown in unexpected and unfavorable directions even since I was a municipal police officer, and it definitely needs to be pruned back and restricted. I think the issues go to what I cited about the courts - excessive discretion by judges has perverted it beyond reason. I do think that better training on what TO DO instead of so much emphasis on what NOT TO DO would reduce the numebr of areas where it applies in the first palce. If you've been given a range of acceptable responses, then there should be fewer areas that are in question in the first place.


I don't think ending the "drug war" is terribly controversial, although I don't think it means a total end to all drug arrests, so what exactly ending it looks like is a large policy question, but aggressive decriminalization and legalization efforts are probably part of it.

For demilitarization, I think this is more cosmetic than people actually think. The "weapons of war" argument is one rightly rejected when gun-grabbers start using it, and I don't think that the same weapons are inappropriate for the police. However, I do think the armored vehicles and a lot of the other equipment is probably doing more harm than good, if only because it causes people to believe the police are more militarized than they are, and there's a lot to be said for not alarming the public unnecessarily. I do object to the implication (not by you; in general) use military tactics or firepower. Military firepower is just so far beyond what the police can bring to bear.

As for deweaponization, I don't think it'd be possible to get enough police to do the job at an economical price. I don't think a reasonable argument can be made that in a country that protects arms as an individual right, this is a defensible policy - but I would advocate that armed civilians be far more the norm, and that police come to regard possession of arms by those they encounter as the default. In Britain, the police started out that way and it's something of a tradition there - even other European countries don't do it. I think here it would be regarded as a form of surrender by a type of criminal that we have in far great numbers than Britain does, and it would not work out the same because we are not starting it from the same place.



That is an excellent question. When I went through the police academy, it simply meant "engaging with and knowing your community". I have this sneaking suspicion that some of these people think it means "the community polices itself" but have given no serious thought to what that actually looks like.



That's essentially what "defund the police" will result in. Ultimately, if the government faisl to protect the populace it will protect itself. In principle I am not entirely opposed to this; I think a little occasional militia duty, like jury duty, could remind a lo of people that rights come with responsibilities. I do not think it will end up looking quite like soem libertarians envisions it, or AT ALL like what the current lefty maniacs think. Ironically, it may in fact be a form of "community policing."

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The proposals are pretty far from anything one would reasonably consider libertarian.

Take the most obvious example: defund the police. Libertarians have been pushing for this for a while, but that's combined with other planks such as robust support for the second amendment and self defense. Let's not forget that libertarians who advocate for reducing police personnel simultaneously advocate for a reduction in the scope of the laws that police would have to enforce and also favor taking the money that would have been spent on police and returning it to the citizenry through reduced taxes. Regardless of whether one thinks this is actually a good idea, one has to acknowledge that you could reasonably expect to need fewer police if you only had three crimes instead of five. Furthermore, if you're not going to enforce a law, it's better to get rid of it so that it can't be abused to punish someone's ideological enemies at a future date.

The outrage mobs are not calling for privatization of police, and they absolutely are not in favor of returning that money. Instead, they want to use that money to fund a grab-bag of progressive causes. One of the items on the list is a new police force under a different name. Essentially, they wish to replace the current police force with one that they have total control over. Moreover, the cross-section of activists calling for an end to the police are also the same people who want hate speech laws and stricter gun control.

As far as who "the leaders" are, while I think DE does have a rather good synopsis of the crowds themselves, it's rather clear what's going on. We've got left-wing activists smashing up businesses and shouting left-wing slogans about tearing down racist oppressive capitalist institutions and replacing them with communism, yet I'm supposed to believe a sneaky white supremacist in a Che Guevara t-shirt infiltrated the protest and incited violence to make black people look bad.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

This, I think, goes to what DFK! was talking about in terms of "implementation". It's a little like the word "equity". What most people think it means and what SJWs use it to mean are two very different things.

For example, they do favor "returning money to the people", but not through reduced taxes; through social spending.

I am not sure to what degree these people have thought through the issues of which laws would be enforced or retained and which would not, but I am sure they have not confronted the simple reality of "how exactly do you stop the citizenry from arming itself against criminals if you don't like that, but also don't want police?" Even if this is on some neighborhood basis, you may find that three blocks over, with no police, there's a bunch of guys who have suddenly figured out how to form a militia because they're not ok with your "community" model.

This is a lesser version of something I've said a few times over the years about revolutions and such. It's all great and well to claim you're going to burn it all down and create a new system, but in the middle of that, how are you going to keep the power and water going, the hospitals open, get the trash taken, and food to the stores? If you don't do these things, and fast, you're going to suddenly find that the mob can come for you too.



I think this is where they will inevitably end up, but I think they have honestly not actually thought this all the way through. They may want a new police force by a different name, but they have convinced themselves it's something different. In particular, I do not think they have quite thought through who will be on it. The old police, who actually do know how to do the job? Or a bunch of people with the right political beliefs? If it's the former, I don't think they are going to do the same job for less or no money, if it's the latter, well... good luck. The people who own the guns privately include a huge proportion of the police... and the military.



These people absolutely exist, and you are absolutely correct about what they have gotten up to and about the nonsense the media has been spreading to avoid confronting that it's been carrying water for these people for years. Three weeks ago people protesting were supposed to be horrible rednecks who were likely to shoot someone so they could get a haircut because scary black rifles (UPDATE: No one shot, no buildings burned at COVID protests), now all of a sudden they're all peaceful, but "white supremacists" are somehow causing the violence and totally not ANTIFA because... well because Trump!!

That said, I do not think that;s what DFK! meant by leaders; there is no one out there as the voice of this movement; the folks you're referring to are already targets of investigation at one stage or another. With the exception of "the squad" who are taken seriously ONLY because of the sitcom-level fascination with the idea that a sort-of attractive young Hispanic girl taking on Trump is so wonderful, politicians are really not "leading" this and other media figures are just vapidly parroting what the mob is saying. Even Bernie Sanders is not on board with defund the police; he gave an entirely reasonable rebuttal of the position, and for a few minutes after reading it I was wondering "who is this man, and what has he done with Bernie Sanders?"

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So you guys heard of this "Free State of Chaz" thing in Seattle?


Holy cow - no good is going to come from this. I'm so glad the Seattle police just ceded ground. Pretty sure these people WANT an insurrection. No sarcasm.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yeah, there's a picture of some kid with an AR-15 and some body armor (I think; not 100% sure he has plates) captioned as a "volunteer working security" at an "Entrance" to the zone. Allegedly checking IDs or something. (Checking them for what is not clear)

These people are essentially LARPing right now; this is a big adventure and they clearly have not even begun to think about how this looks a week from now or a year from now. There's apparently a list of demands, but no identifiable person actually in charge. Right now power and water are on, internet works, presumably there is food... what if that doesn't continue to be the case? The people doing this are just assuming the system they want to get rid of will keep making sure they don't have to deal with such pedestrian issues that are a lot less coll than establishing "police free autonomous zones" or whatever.

The political establishment in the city and state is still clearly more afraid of ending up on the wrong side of the current narrative, than of what might happen if this goes on. They think they're going to "de-escalate" and appease their way out of this, but so far it seems to be emboldening this nonsense.

Trump, for his part, is threatening to restore order if they don't. Technically, that's the right thing to do: If the state and the city can't maintain public order, the federal government must. However, I really think he ought to hold off; there's also an aspect here of city and state governors being allowed to abdicate their responsibilities, and then blame the President for the consequences if he does it for them that will (disregarding Trump himself) exacerbate this in the long run. If city and state governments can outright ignore problems, wait for the Federal government to step in, then blame the Federal government for any fallout, that's potentially another gigantic burden on our basic Constitutional system that everyday people pay the price for.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Some great points in your last paragraph.

I'm backing up slightly from my original condemnation here, realizing it would not be morally congruent to have supported the Bundy's and condemn these people. That said, this needs sorted soon, and Bundy had clear demands and a unified leadership.

This commune of extreme progressives has neither, as far as I can tell. Wild demands, or no demands, leads to exactly what you said: either "de-escalation" which the mobs seem to be taking as capitulation, which is both not true and dangerous for the next time around; or removal by force, which as you said is nuanced and probably something the locals need to handle.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I don't remember enough about Bundy to really compare them, but he wasn't essentially demanding a total reordering of society or anything remotely like what these people seem to want.

I think that right now this is being tolerated and even egged on by the press and city government because the fear of even tacitly admitting that there arebad actors amng progressives is still greater than the fear of the bad actors. There's a real terrorof being the first one to have to say "enough".

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Trump is better off letting the state pay for it's own policy.

_________________
"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

No, the Bundy's had specific, targeted concerns. Not a reordering of society. My primary axis of comparison is the armed takeover of a public space.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

One important point in that regard is that Bundy wasn't imposing demands on other private citizens. These people have swept up a lot of private businesses and residences in their public space takeover.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Maybe the Branch Davidians are a better comparison?

_________________
The Dude abides.

I don't believe they were imposing on the rights of any third parties either.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/ ... o-the-mob/

This article perfectly illustrates the dilemma of police reform. In doing so, it is vital that there be indoor opened for politicians to throw cops under the bus for their own purposes.

In this particular case, the most important fact in my view is that the prosecutor thinks TASERS are deadly weapons in police hands, but not when someone uses one ON police. Aside from the obvious magical thinking, when there is no set standard the police obviously must guess. It is simply not acceptable to wait until AFTER an incident and then invent a standard.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Neither official side has a good solution. Maybe on purpose?

_________________
"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Well, if the liberals prosecute and lock some folks up, they'll lose votes. If the conservatives leave things be, it'll illustrate the need for law and order. I'm not seeing anyone having a reason to want to stop the burning.

_________________
In time, this too shall pass.

I honestly am good with the current stalemate right now, despite the sadness it's causing. The federal government is letting states handle (or not handle) this on their own.

_________________
The Dude abides.

Diamondeye, which Federal policing/enforcement-type agencies would have authority to intervene in these riots and under what circumstances?

_________________