700 cases of police brutality is indeed less than 100k deaths caused by authoritarian dictatorship. As a democratic country we’re trying to avoid it with peaceful organization and protest, but our law enforcement keeps violating our constitutional rights.
Yeah that’s all police brutality. I’m glad that in America our law enforcement hasn’t dove to the level of shutting off our internet, but they’ve definitely used water canons, rubber bullets, and tear gas on peaceful citizens executing their constitutional rights. I’m glad that we as a people find that even our relatively low recorded cases internationally of over 700 filmed videos of police brutality nationwide within the span of 3 weeks is totally and utterly unacceptable to such a peaceful country as ours. I hope we can further reduce this number over time!
You're cherry-picking examples of how it's worse and ignoring examples of how it's better. Why not compare to Norway, Canada, or New Zealand?
Also it's not like the same regulatory body came up with these numbers and said "this is an objective metric on the quantity of police brutality in these countries!" You just feel like 700 is low and other countries are worse, when there could be many more examples we don't know about in all of the countries!
You may not be aware of this but in the education system of the United States, which is mandatory for all of our children, we are taught that the history of America is the culture of fighting against authoritarian regimes no matter their form. While the truth is complicated(in fact we’ve helped set up authoritarian regimes), it means that Americans generally view the protests of any authoritarian moves to be a patriotic duty. If you’re not American I don’t expect you to necessarily understand our culture, but where we are from it’s generally unacceptable for the police to treat citizens this way.
Having lived in the U.S. for a couple decades, I can confirm that a fundametal aspect of American history, culture, and education is about standing up for civil and individual rights. This has been true since the founding of the country, that numerous movements and protests were necessary for social progress. Americans are taught this from an early age, that we must fight for our rights.
It's also true that authoritarianism runs deep in American culture. Its military and police force have been complicit in shameful crimes against humanity around the world and within the country.
The challenge is that this situation (and the corruption that enables it) has been systematicaly organized and developed over (at least) the past century, and is part of the reason for its wealth and privilege. Clearly, the overclass is not willing to give up its power, and will resort to the same old strategy of oppression and manipulation.
As sad as it is that protests against police brutality are met with even more brutality, it is a patriotic duty of Americans to right the wrongs, to express anger with the systemic issue of racism and violence against peaceful citizens, and to demand change.
As an American who grew up with the ideal of "America the beautiful", my hope is that the protests don't stop there. The illness runs all the way to the top, and the whole world is waiting for the U.S. to grow up and actually behave according to the principles that it claims.
No, 100k deaths is warfare. If you know how bad things can get in other countries you're more likely to try and cut this shit out in America before it gets that bad. Please don't take pride in accepting oppression meekly.
