This is probably an unpopular opinion but I would like politicians on the left to speak up about the rioting and burning of stuff at the current protests and also the Tesla and George Floyd protests. It doesn’t help the cause if we allow some assholes to destroy stuff. Basically they are giving people like Trump an excuse to deploy force and a lot of people will agree. I can’t see what is achieved by burning cars and stores.
> This is probably an unpopular opinion but I would like politicians on the left to speak up about the rioting and burning of stuff at the current protests and also the Tesla and George Floyd protests.
I mean, Gavin Newsom just did a long interview from a "crisis center" where he did exactly that, today. And plenty of Democratic politicians also speak against violent protests whenever they occur.
But unless you actually pay pretty close attention to what Democratic politicians actually say, you won't hear these statements. Fox doesn't cover Democratic politicians speaking against violence. And frankly, if there's a 99.9% peaceful protest with one burning car, the media will devote 80% of their coverage to the burning car, and maybe a few sentences to politicians saying the burning car is bad. The media is unfortunately interested in spectacle and entertainment.
I pay more attention than average to what politicians of both parties say, and it's kind of hilarious how often I hear "Why didn't so-and-so say X?" (uh, they do every week or two), or "I never believed so-and-so would do Y" (uh, they literally promised Y on the campaign trail). I don't know how to fix this.
The Democratic politicians have painted themselves into a corner by trying to maintain far left support. Compare the messaging:
Trump: We must have law and order. Immigration laws must be enforced. We will not tolerate riots or destruction.
Protesters: The government shouldn't detain people who are in the country illegally. We should ignore federal laws we don't agree with. If we disagree with federal agents who are enforcing existing laws, we should impede them, attack them, and destroy property to lash out.
This is not an endorsement of Trump, as he's clearly milking this situation to squeeze Newsom. This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal to everyone outside California. Until the left takes a logically defensible position on illegal immigration, they will continue to be vulnerable to Trump's theater on this and he will continue to bludgeon them with it in elections.
You're further pushing the narrative here. If the government had acted entirely within the law then people would be less upset about it. I don't think it'd be entirely gone, but lesser for sure. Until the right takes a logically defensive position on illegal immigration, they will continue to trigger this reaction.
That's the point; the right WANTS this reaction. It's how they will continue to capture the American center. Masked people waving Mexican flags while they stand on top of burned out police cars is a gift to them.
Trump's political superpower is his ability to take a base position that is entirely reasonable and agreeable to most people ("The US must enforce its federal immigration laws"), then use inflammatory rhetoric and legal boundary testing to whip his opposition into undisciplined, emotional overreactions that leave them in a worse political position than him. He has been absurdly successful in using this tactic since 2015.
I think that's a really succinct description of "how Trump works"....and it's also an interesting case study in Gerasimov's "Reflexive Control Doctrine".
The far left are anarchists and communists. They consider the Democratic party part of the capitalist system that needs to be replaced. Democrats are the neoliberal party. Democrats are not trying to get their support. Right-wing media has painted Democrats and progressives as radical far leftists, but it's simply not true. Most of their policies can be seen implemented in Europe.
>The Democratic politicians have painted themselves into a corner by trying to maintain far left support
>This is a deliberate strategy to put Newsom in an untenable position and paint him as an irredeemable liberal
What's fascinating with current US politics and media is how these two sentences can be constructed in same sentence in an attempt to come off as "see I'm smart and media literate, I can see the full picture!" while literally the first sentence of your comment shows that that's not the case.
The media repeating "Democrats are far left" long enough and it have penetrated your head. There's probably pandering to far left in democratic party I assume, but it have been magnified to a reality altering level by media so that's now believed as the core, while same thing happening on the far-right & Republican party.
Both side must be truly be thinking like you, I assume. "I see the full picture, I'm smart" while parroting a distortion only required to be repeated for years.
If everyone could put their phone down, touch some grass, take a road trip to the opposite political isle maybe this distortion could've been avoided.
First of all, chill out, for someone tooting their own horn, your own perspective is very one dimensional. What's really interesting about the democratic party's position is how they've utterly failed to embrace the popular parts of "left" policy (universal healthcare and etc, basically look at bernie sanders for what policy is actually widely popular on the left). And yet, they embrace incredibly unpopular parts of "extreme left". Being pro-illegal immigration is incredibly stupid and unpopular. DEI discrimination on the basis of race is also incredibly stupid and unpopular. I suppose i could also mention transitions for children. Need i mention free speech? It's a travesty that republicans have become the free speech party, but it's something the left has ceded.
So we're in a situation where the democratic party is utterly failing to actually implement any of the good or popular left policies that would help the masses, even the pretty moderate ones, but is pushing incredibly unpopular extreme left policies that don't actually help the citizenry. In that context it's honestly a very reasonable thing for someone on the right to point to the dems call the party far left. And yet for those of us that want these policies for the people, the dems appear right-leaning. Very odd how this has worked out, but both are true in a way.
I think the reason behind this is mainly due to them being controlled by their corporate donors who dictate focusing on the unpopular policies which are cheaper for the corporations to contend with. Universal healthcare would be a huge blow to corporate control in this country, as right now healthcare is tied to employment and that gives large corporate employers incredibly excessive power.
> And yet, they embrace incredibly unpopular parts of "extreme left". Being pro-illegal immigration is incredibly stupid and unpopular. DEI discrimination on the basis of race is also incredibly stupid and unpopular. I suppose i could also mention transitions for children. Need i mention free speech? It's a travesty that republicans have become the free speech party, but it's something the left has ceded.
You've swallowed a lot of right-wing propaganda about the Democratic Party. Do you really thing Democrats are "pro-illegal immigration"? The rest of these tendentious mischaracterizations take some tedious and likely fruitless effort to debunk, but just think about that phrase. Do you think any party is in favor of illegal immigration? How would that work anyway? Parties try to pass laws. The best you could find is that some party favors immigration policies you would prefer be illegal.
Democrats are against violating laws to deport people here legally or following the legal, prescribed process for adjudicating their status. Republicans are okay with breaking the law to chuck people out of the country. That produces a different result, but "illegal" is on the wrong side of the balance there for your argument.
You're not in a great position to tell Democrats what to say and do if you're clearly ignoring what they say and do and believing the lies other people feed you about them.
> Do you really thing Democrats are "pro-illegal immigration"?
I do. Demonstrably so. The Biden administration admitted between 8-20 million illegal immigrants into the country, depending on the estimate used. Even at the low end, this is the highest ever in the history of the country. More than any other administration. They made all kinds of excuses. They claimed they needed new laws. Trump solved it almost overnight. [https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc...] The Democrats lied. They didn't need more laws. They wanted things the way they were. They chose to permit the situation and allow it to devolve like that.
Now almost every Democrat representative is resolutely opposed to deporting illegal immigrants. There is simply no other way to interpret this than they are in fact pro illegal immigration.
I'm not the person uncritically examining party propaganda. My information is based on what the democratic party has said and done, nobody else. So, entire post misses the mark very hard for me.
Frankly i think you're exactly the person who is part of the problem here, proudly prejudiced, not very well informed despite thinking you know better than everyone.
> Do you think any party is in favor of illegal immigration? How would that work anyway? Parties try to pass laws. The best you could find is that some party favors immigration policies you would prefer be illegal.
This kind of reads like it's written by AI or something but either way it's irrational on such a fundamental level that i don't really know what to make of it. Obviously a ruling power in a country can be in favor of something illegal and take action to increase illegality on purpose. That's what you are saying trump is doing, so you don't even disagree with yourself. Where did you think the huge numbers of illegal immigrants came from while under democratic leadership, did they materialize independently? No, they promoted illegality.
It wasn't in my post but just in case you aren't an AI, the democratic party is pro illegal immigration for relatively straightforward reasons. their large corporate donors like having a large cheap underclass of workers to exploit and abuse. Illegal immigrants are much less likely to cause problems at work and are likely to work harder because they are at a much higher risk. If you're a CEO you can bet it's better to hire people you know will never unionize, you can exploit easily and won't file any workplace safety complaints. You can even commit wage theft with abandon, what are they going to do about it? There's also other secondary effects like creating a large amount of illegality overloads the courts and generally creates chaos which can be easy to exploit.
I've also seen the argument that the dems hope to swing demographics to secure the vote but i'm not so sure about that one, especially considering how hard legal voting immigrants are swinging against the democratic party for all of my prior mentioned reasons. I feel like if you were actually in touch with the legal immigrant population you would understand this a lot better.
I'm in favor of large scale legal immigration so people get full workplace rights and aren't easy to take advantage of. Duh. Creating an underclass of workers with less rights to keep corpo rat profits rising is bad. The democratic party has done the opposite, this is fact. Not really sure what else there is to say, all your smoke isn't worth much.
And i do think the dem's longer term plan was something stupid like "bring in infinite illegal immigrants to create a problem" and then "we will sell the solution and make them all citizens!" and that went ass up with their own hubris exploding in their face. Either way that's evil shit.
I don't know how my comment gave the impression I'm agitated. I'm far from US so it's just an outsider observation.
In either case, thank you for the insight. It didn't give me any additional insight and while you call it one dimensional, I only see an expansion of the same idea I shared: both sides use culture war to smear each other (and as a lazy cop-out to game the media attention for coverage and votes). Most people have heard of AOC, Bernie, and Elizabeth Warren's. Even Ted Cruz & RFK JR (pre election). Surely when congress is 400+ and senate is 100+ people, those names don't represent ALL of the intricate factions of the two parties?
Yet we all act like they somehow are the representative of the opposite. To me you're just saying the same thing, but relieving any responsibility of the parrots, and putting it solely on corporate and self interested politician.
If those culture wars win votes, I think putting the sole responsibility that way is just an convenient excuse for everyone to play along the system and shout at each other.
I guess to the people shouting at each other, my comment might have come off as "touting my horn". I'm from the outside, I don't have any high horse or stakes in this but I understand the confusion
You seemed overly anxious to ignore what I actually wrote in my previous comment and use as an excuse to force everyone into reading your diatribe about how the media portrays Democrats, even though that's not actually in conflict with anything I wrote. So yes, I think it would be good for you to do some self-reflection before telling others they are living in a bubble. You might not be as objective as you think you are.
Remind us all what crime he was convicted of. A $20 bill was alleged by a shop clerk to be counterfeit. There is no evidence either that it was, or that it was known to be counterfeit.
> He then resisted a lawful arrest. His death was entirely self inflicted.
Hard to self-inflict murder. "It wasn't murder!" - if his death was due solely to his alleged actions, and not due to excessive and inappropriate force by the police involved, then an officer would not have been charged with and convicted of second-degree murder. Nor would prosecutors not only charge the police involved, but move to increase charges and sentencing requests due to the "unnecessary and particularly excessive cruelty being inflicted upon [Floyd] by the officers". Weird.
Why was kneeling on his neck for nine and a half minutes necessary? There were four officers there. We all watched the video. I'm not aware that your other claims have been proven true.
Spreads out police resources for one. Protesters outnumber police. Every cop pulled away from the protest to respond to a fire, looting incident, or whatever can translate directly to lives saved / protesters not arrested etc. Also makes certain goals more achievable. I read a crimethinc article about the george floyd protests and it suggested that the looting drew the cops away from the barricade at the police station, allowing them to destroy it. Seems a lot more practical than pearl clutching.
We should be clear, protesting is not illegal. It's protected first amendment speech. There is activity at protests that is illegal, and should be punished, but that's not protesting and lumping them together puts a chilling effect on.
Everyone says this but no one means it. Governments just declare an area offlimits, or they declare a curfew or one of hundreds of ways they use to make protesters illegal. Ultimately, protests are only legal inside a small cube where no one can see, and thus the protesters have no effect.
Protesting is illegal. People should protest anyway because it is stupid that protesting is illegal.
No, I am not your valet. You can easily search for something like 'democrats condemn violence' if you actually want to know instead of wasting my time.
I think the difficulty of this is how much Trump absolutely wants to escalate things, because it fits right into his narrative.
I've seen lots of pictures of protestors waving Mexican flags, and of the burning Waymos, etc. My guess is these are a very small percentage of protestors, but it makes for great TV, and Trump gets to say that he's "protecting America against violent foreign invaders". And I can imagine many people watching this and agreeing with him - I mean, I consider myself quite liberal, but waving a Mexican flag at these events just makes me think you can fuck right off with that bullshit.
It's a great example IMO of how Trump deliberately sows division and escalates whenever possible in order to use people's fear to consolidate power. It's basically Autocracy 101.
The first amendment does apply to the rioter with the flag but it also does to the people watching this. The watchers will get inflamed by (a) the vandalism and (b) the spectacle of the Mexican (or any foreign) flag associated with the vandalism. They absolutely have a right to get angry.
I recently naturalized as a US citizen. It took ~15 years (permanent residency + citizenship). That was after spending a decade (multiple programs) here as a student. No one should suffer and live in fear in an ideal world. At the same time, it is galling to see the left support illegal immigration because (a) someone "contributes" to the economy, (b) they are paying taxes (how is this known by anyone except the payer and the IRS?), (c) they are good people.
The reaction of my extreme-left wing friends is to say "well, you got to come here. They deserve the same opportunity." I am the first one to admit I have had some advantages. At the same time, every legal immigrant goes through a relatively rigorous process. Any whiff of a criminal record has the potential to derail the process, as should be the case. Just apply the law equally to everyone. That's one of the promises of our constitution. I mean this both for liberals and conservatives. If a law is unjust, we have mechanisms in place to overturn them. But to ignore the law is a long-term danger to this country. This is one of the reasons there is a lot of support for this type of action. It is borne out of frustration. Lastly, the idea that people supporting deportation are racists is an easy cop-out to not have to explain how we got to the current state (saying this as a non-white person although I also disagree with the left's assertion that only white people can be racist).
It's weird that you won't come out and say what you think is "going on" though. I've given the explanation that the vast majority of people waving Mexican flags in LA would give: they are expressing that they're proud to be Mexican, or of Mexican heritage, and are sick of being treated like they're less than other people because of that heritage.
What is your explanation? I suspect that it's something along the lines of: "people waving foreign flags are signaling their intention to invade the US", but that you don't want to say it overtly because it's obviously a racist talking point from right-wing media.
You would do well to remember that the protesters likely feel it would be accomplishing their political goals to provoke a larger violent confrontation with the police. The best case for the protesters looking to undermine Trump is if they convince the US Marines to open fire and slaughter lots of innocents on live TV. That could make these protests 10x - 100x larger than they are currently. Think Boston Massacre and you'll get the idea.
I doubt the rioters want to be slaughtered to undermine the president. But the people egging them on and providing them with riot masks seem to like the idea.
