So I read through and appreciated the effort Vector put into that well formed and delivered post, and then I read a reply which quotes five excerpts and treats it as a dismissal of the entire treatise... and maybe I'm still just angry from some of the shit I saw being done last night alone... including some unflattering shoutouts to our recent sub-topic of Columbus, Ohio... but I can't just let that go goddammit.
Dwarf_Fever: why do you think the history of european invaders in the americas, the genocides both deliberate and accidental, the construction of a nation on "virgin territory" inhabited only by "backwards savages" which was built on the literal blood, sweat, and tears of people who had been reduced to owned property...
...a nation of noble aims and ideas which nonetheless empowered white male landowners in a fashion that allowed them to take for granted their privileged status then and accordingly allows others nowadays to deny said status existed because they didn't run around stating the obvious to all and sundry...
...a nation which suffered and quelled a traitorous insurrection over the radical idea that perhaps it might be wrong to claim ownership over not just the fruits of another man's labor, but indeed declaring ownership of the very man himself seems perhaps to run afoul of that pesky "all men are created equal" stuff...
...a nation that to this day maintains a regularly replenished pool of those who openly sympathize with traitors, and tolerates them so long as they remember to not say the quiet parts out loud...
...a nation that as we speak has in various locations in various cities all throughout it endured the confusing and frustrating and tragic sight of row after row of all too often white men wearing armored vests and helmets and carrying shields and weapons coming up against crowds of nonviolent people of all ages and genders and tones and presentations with just as many if not more ways of trying to get across a simple request for the largely white forces amassed against them and the all too white audiences in power who are pushing and pulling at those forces from above: please stop killing us.
It is the simplest and easiest to satisfy request a peaceful voice can deliver, it requires no extra effort to accomplish, simply relaxing one's grip on a baton, allowing the spray can or taser or firearm in your grip to return to a holster if not the ground, releasing a forearm which was torqued against a throat, removing a knee which was pressing on a neck.
It has to be done eventually, maybe it happens at the end of your shift, or maybe after the cooling meat underneath you stops being a person anymore, but why is it so outlandish to ask for it to happen before someone does something that can't be undone?
How can anyone look at a group of people being attacked by the police because they were asking to not be killed by the police... and think the problem lies anywhere but with the police?
Set aside such silly things as "laws being a matter of right and wrong, black and white, absolute" in a nation which operates under principles which prominently encode the right of an accused lawbreaker to ask a group of their peers if the law should be applied in that situation...
...what possible defense is there for attacking, possibly even killing someone, for doing nothing but standing peacefully and asking you to not kill them?
If you do nothing, you satisfy their request, if you do any number of limitless other possibilities, you satisfy their request, only by clenching your jaw, readying your weapons, and stating that "no, you do not have the same right to exist which I have" through your actions will you fail to do what they asked of you.
Even if you thought you could provide a defense of that, why would you? It will be false from the outset unless you also negate your right to exist, won't it?
Edit: Whoops, six... three... five, numbers is bullshit, all hail the empty set!
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Topic: The Abusive Policing Thread: Beyond Brown, No Justice (Read 445453 times)