K. A. Pital wrote:Be careful as not to fall victim to old Godwin: comparing rioters in a city known for problems with police abuse of power to Nazis is the dumbest I have seen in a while.
I did not say the rioters are like Nazis. I was using the Nazis as an example (admittedly an extreme one) to illustrate that understanding why someone does something is not the same as approving of it.
I am not strawmanning your position: you really think riots are morally wrong regardless of the reasons.
Pretty much, though I accept that their are extreme situations where violence can be justified, as I've already said in this thread I believe.
This means you confine yourself to non-violence at all costs, like Ghandi.
That does not follow at all. It means that I object to a specific form of indiscriminate violence.
Needless to say, some people took hard decisions and he got all the glory, but never once it was remembered that Ghandi advised the Jews to go die in ovens without resistance.
Your implication that Ghandi's decision to stand by non-violence even in the face of oppression was not a hard decision is rather offensive. Of course, "hard decisions" is a euphemism for "The ends justify the means."
Also, you falsely equated my position to Ghandi's, then attacked Ghandi's character to attack me by proxy, all while pulling the Nazi card as you criticized me for doing.
Meanwhile, resistance to authority that is abusive is never clean. It is most often tainted by criminal element (which puts off all the white-gloves moralists from people who are, at times, fighting the good fight with the only methods known or considered efficient by themselves).
I don't condemn all resistance to authority because of criminal elements, but I do condemn the criminal elements unless their are circumstances that I feel justify their crimes. What's wrong with that?
That is not to say Baltimore in particular is justified: I have no fucking idea, I am not there you know... But I want to remind you that the rule of law is generally a rule of law for the upper class,
Might I suggest that you are viewing this issue through the lens of your admitted communist ideology and that that is prejudicing you?
considering how many of them walk unharmed for crimes that can put the low man in jail for a good part of his life. I want to remind you that representative democracy is not excusing abuse of power, and it makes no fucking difference to John Doe killed, maimed or put in jail though police abuse, that a fat cat changes another fat cat once in a while in the White House and the Congress. Zero difference, in fact.
Of course democracy doesn't excuse abuse of power. I never said anything to the contrary, so why you should feel that you need to explain this to me...
I do hate the "All politicians are the same" refrain that is implied here, though. Its a tired, trite line spouted by simple minds.
I went through it myself. People took part in elections but the cops kept mutilating people through beating, extorting money in protection rackets, including drug money, all while everyone extolled the virtues of democracy.
Democracy can be abused, of course. But that doesn't mean that its a bad idea.
And even though my view of the First World is that their life level greatly exceeds everything that hitherto existed, some places and some situations even there are grim enough to justify riots. And that said, I want to reiterate that this is my general opinion: I have not been following the events in Baltimore closely.
I doubt rioting is ever a good course of action. Its excessive in a situation where violence is not warranted, potentially ineffective in situations bad enough to warrant violence revolt, and indiscriminate.
