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Police riots and Dictator Don: Open thread

Police are rioting, coast to coast, functioning not as protectors of the peace but as counterdemonstrators trying to beat down, often quite literally, those who would rein them in. Meanwhile, Trump is threatening to sic the military on demonstrators, a good percentage of us are living under curfew, and it’s really starting to seem, as Don Lemon of all people noted on CNN, like “we are teetering on the brink of dictatorship.”

So let’s have another open thread. No trolls.

–DF

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Kat, ambassador of the feminist government in exile
Kat, ambassador of the feminist government in exile
4 years ago

Sorry about that photo standing all by itself; I wasn’t able to edit that post. That is a photo of George Floyd holding up a Bible with his own name embossed in gold on the cover. The photo was published 6 days ago. Floyd was, it turns out, very active in the black Christian community in Houston. So Trump’s photo of himself holding up the Bible is an act of trolling. Once again. As always. Hail to the Troll-in-Chief.

George Floyd Left a Gospel Legacy in Houston
As a person of peace, “Big Floyd” opened up ministry opportunities in the Third Ward housing projects.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/may/george-floyd-ministry-houston-third-ward-church.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

numerobis
numerobis
4 years ago

Thanks David for calling this what it is — police riots.

Kevin
Kevin
4 years ago

Trump claims to be ‘best president for Black America since Abraham Lincoln.’ It’s tempting to treat him to an evening at the theatre…

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@Ooglyboggles

Woman in video: “It brings out the wrong people”

And what people are those, Karen? Just admit you hate Black people already.

@Kevin
Well, Trump reminds me a bit more of Andrew Johnson. Dismantles all the progress of the last few years, is corrupt, and gets impeached.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
4 years ago

An NPR story about David McAtee, which at least nods toward questioning the official narrative:

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/868933655/the-louisville-community-who-loved-david-mcatee-has-questions-about-his-death

Even the guy’s nephew is all, well, he must have been trying to protect his niece and that’s why he shot at police. There were a dozen people there! Where is the interview with one or more of them??? Why are we taking the cops’ version of events at face value??? Where is the gun that he supposedly fired???

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

There’s a big issue in general with the media taking the cops statements at face value without fact checking. Some outlet, I think the NY Post published a story saying looters stole $2.4 million in watches from Rolex during the protest, but Rolex later said that no watches were stolen because they weren’t even left out in the first place.

Cops lie constantly and the media either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care.

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@WWTH

Cops lie constantly and the media either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care.

It’s the second one. They know cops are lying, they just don’t care because they won’t get as much readership if they start calling out the cops as liars. So many white Americans, even center and left ones, have been raised with and believe a narrative that the cops are good with “a few bad ones”, and will stop reading a paper which challenges that.

Catalpa
Catalpa
4 years ago

I don’t understand how the media can refuse to acknowledge that cops lie through their teeth after the effing cops clearly arrested Omar Jimenez on live TV for no reason and later issued a statement that he and the rest of his crew were arrested for refusing to move.

After Omar Jimenez, Linda Tirado, Tim Myers and Amelia Brace, you’d think that the media and journalists would realize that the police are absolutely no friends of theirs, but it seems like they refuse to stop bootlicking anyway.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
4 years ago

that the cops are good with “a few bad ones”

Yeah, a few bad apples. Well, the saying is that a few bad apples spoils the bunch, which is accurate with apples because rot will spread from one to another, and is accurate with people as well for the same reason. If you don’t want a spoiled bunch, you pick out and toss away the bad apples, which is exactly what cops don’t do.

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

Given that a MAGA sent a bomb to CNN after hearing violent anti-media rhetoric from Trump and the media still didn’t seem to realize that a fascist government would be bad for them, I have little hope they’ll learn from this. Especially after NYT published that horrific op-ed from Tom Cotton and then defended it as a necessary for the American public to view. I’m honestly not sure what’ll take.

I have been thinking that the one thing that could lessen violent crackdowns against protesters is corporate retail not liking the disruptions to their business. The military emptying streets in commercial areas isn’t good for the bottom line. If politicians aren’t responsive to the well being and rights of the citizens, they may be responsive to disruptions to capital.

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
4 years ago

Oh, awesome, De Blasio is patting NYPD on the back for “showing a lot of restraint.”

I guess they could be rolling people over in tanks and they’re showing a ton of “restraint” by not openly murdering the people they are sworn to serve and protect (you know, like in Louisville). If that’s the bar to clear, then sure, they’re showing lots of restraint. ?

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

Well, Notch has a predictably awful take on the riots. I’m so glad he left Mojang.comment image
(He seems to have deleted this tweet since, I was only able to find screenshots)

Policy of Madness
Policy of Madness
4 years ago

I want to know where the Second Amendment folks are. The ones who say they have guns to protect the people from government tyranny. I saw them when the “tyranny” was “please wear a mask for the safety of your neighbors” but now that the cops are committing fucking war crimes on the American populace … where are they? Cowering under the bed like cowards? Or are they on the brown-shirt side?

Don’t answer that, I already know the answer.

Allandrel
Allandrel
4 years ago

@Policy of Madness

We all acutely feel the privileges we lack, and don’t much notice the ones we have.

This is so true. I don’t often have cause to feel my white, male, cisgender, hetero, educated privileges (and others that I don’t feel to the degree that I couldn’t even think of them just now) … but I am so, so aware of my lack of able-bodied and neurotypical privilege. They’re inescapable.

One where my personal experience is a bit telling is Christian privilege, because as a member of a minority, out-of-the-mainstream sect (Quakers) I benefit from some of it, but far from all. And guess which I end up noticing? Not the privilege that I hold.

It’s one thing to know we hold privilege, it’s another to really be aware of it. It takes work, and it is work that we are obligated to do.

Or are they on the brown-shirt side?

I like to call them Redcaps, both in reference to their MAGA ball caps and these guys:

https://mythology.wikia.org/wiki/Redcap

Moogue
Moogue
4 years ago

I wonder how fucking far right one has to be in order to be further right than Pat Fucking Robertson.

‘You just don’t do that, Mr. President’: Televangelist Pat Robertson condemns Trump’s ‘law and order’ response to protests.

Catalpa
Catalpa
4 years ago

I initially spoonerized the name and went “oh no, Robert Pattinson is really right wing?”

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@Catalpa
I don’t think so, but he’s been acting rather unusually since the lockdown started.

Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
Surplus to Requirements, Observer of the Vast Blight-Wing Enstupidation
4 years ago

@Catalpa:

After Omar Jimenez, Linda Tirado, Tim Myers and Amelia Brace, you’d think that the media and journalists would realize that the police are absolutely no friends of theirs, but it seems like they refuse to stop bootlicking anyway.

@WWTH:

Given that a MAGA sent a bomb to CNN after hearing violent anti-media rhetoric from Trump and the media still didn’t seem to realize that a fascist government would be bad for them, I have little hope they’ll learn from this.

Yeah, but you see, the police exist to protect and serve the billionaire owners of the giant media conglomerates, so the word from on high includes “thou shalt not portray the police in a negative light in thy reportage”. Likewise, those billionaires (and, in the case of WaPo, a trillionaire) very much like the current government because it’s basically writing the superrich all the blank checks they might want, starting with the 2017 tax cut and continuing to various coronavirus relief bills in the present, so “whosoever does not treat right-wing voters, including literal bomb-throwing MAGAs, with kid gloves shalt be fired, and wilt everafter suffer eternal destitution in the fiery pits of blackballed unemployment”.

Which you hint at in your very next paragraph:

If politicians aren’t responsive to the well being and rights of the citizens, they may be responsive to disruptions to capital.

As serve the politicians, so serve the media.

Rabid Rabbit
Rabid Rabbit
4 years ago

I’m not sure I really want to know, but does anyone know how the racists are reacting to the fact that two of the cops involved in the George Floyd murder are of Asian descent?

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@Rabid Rabbit
In my experience most white racists don’t hate Asians as much as Black people (which may be related to how Hitler declared Asians equal to Aryans, or how they fetishize Asian women), so they probably won’t hold anything against Asian cops.