The authorities were not prepared for the violent protests. This pawn shop owner was apparently somewhat prepared... https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/28/looter-shot-dead-pawn-shop-owner-george-floyd-riots-12768878/
There comes a point where you cannot even be mad at the protesters or the destruction of property. They are marginalized to such an extent that they lash out.
Nah, i think many of the looters are just looking for a quick score. Loading up baskets of particular items is not lashing out.
The looting? Always happens when there are slash and burn riots. Doesn’t bother me at all. Riots are the last resort of the disenfranchised and marginalized. Fix the underlying problems and this won’t be an issue. I hope the protesters did billions of dollars of damage as nothing else has worked. As for the looters, many will be caught because of cameras. Robbing a Target is pretty foolish as they have high grade surveillance cameras inside and out.
I think you missed his point. This country's history of actions has caused the situation where desperate people like this exist. Again, I've addressed this before. Discussing these deep rooted systemic issues normatively is pointless. Telling a large group of people they "ought to not do this" is pointless. Instead we need to understand how these people got to this point. But then again, my philosophy might be very different than yours. I believe that humans have little free will. Most of our actions are based in how we were raised, what we experienced and the cards handed to us. Changing systemic wide spread behavior or trends with "ought" statements seems like a pointless exercise. Everyone agrees that destroying other people's property is not justfied. The people who engage in these actions should be prosecuted. Pretty damage, theft crimes etc should always be enforced. At a certain point, b****ing about culture and incessantly making "ought" statements about groups of people makes me conclude the motive is to be on a high horse rather than actually having a desire to solving problems.
Yes this is where the focus should go, on the core of the problem, which you have successfully identified. A man being tortured and murdered in cold blood on the street by a police officer who hasn’t been arrested Isn’t exactly ideal... but boy these protest are a serious problem. They are protesting for a reason. Committing crimes is lashing out. It’s saying, if the police don’t have to follow the law then neither do we.
Kap taking a knee was about disrespect and outright UNGRATEFULNESS to a Sacred Event where people take their minds off of this kind of ****. We're pulling a Trump and brushing off those Pass Due Notices like it's no BFD.
The Minneapolis police department wasn't prepared for anything. This isn't the first time that we've had police shootings. There was the Philando Castile shooting in St Paul. There was Justine Damond's death by a Minneapolis police officer when she was the one calling the cops for help. There was Thurman Blevins who literally begged officers not to kill him before he was shot. When Jamar Clark was shot there were protests for almost a month. And there have been other instances beyond those. Of course the city was going to erupt when this happened. We have an awful history of these sorts of things. What you're seeing is a culmination of years of anger. This should have been expected. The reality is that over 90% of officers in the MPD live outside of Minneapolis. The people who police our streets are not part of our community. It has been a long standing issue. Minneapolis is hyper segregated and minority communities have long complained that officers with no ties to the community have treated them unfairly. Hell the current police chief of the MPD sued the department years ago over the mistreatment of African American cops like himself. I don't think the media has effectively explained how bad the police department is in Minneapolis. The head of the police union is a despicable officer who has no business being on the force, much less leading the union. The guy is a white nationalist and he's running the police union. Think about that for a second. And he's found all sorts of ways to subvert the government and his own police chief. I can't even imagine how big the protests would have been if we weren't in the middle of a pandemic.
To quote Reagan, that is the soft discrimination of low expectations. I'm not going to excuse or dismiss this just because these people are disenfranchised. Especially not when many of the people harmed by those looters are people from the same socioeconomic group.
Reagan was kind of an idiot though. He was the first string of dumb presidents the GOP brought forth except Bush Sr. He was actually intelligent. Ironically he was the only GOP president in recent history to get one term. If you consider charisma as a part of intelligence which is a reasonable take, then yes he was intelligent in terms of marketing himself a la Trump bit similar to Trump but not to the same extent, Reagan had little intellectual curiosity to learn new things and had little knowledge of economics, government, constitutional law etc.
Reagan wasn't perfect and agree with a lot of what you note about him. Ironically Reagan based on record couldn't get the nomination in the GOP these days. On that quote I agree with him. I understand people are angry and I understand people are marginalized. I am actually angry reading all of the posts from primarily white Liberals many of who live in the suburbs justifying and excusing what has happened here. I'm tired of hearing stuff like "This is the cry of the oppressed!" Frankly it's just another way of saying that poor black people just can't help themselves and be violent. I fully recognize that I'm privileged. I live in this neighborhood by choice and I don't live in the poorest part. The burning and looting of the stores is at most an inconvenience to me. It means a lot more though to the people who started those businesses and the people that work there. I know there is systemic racism that keeps people down. I know from some level I've benefited from it. That doesn't mean I accept that lashing out and burning your own community is the only or acceptable way of expressing yourself. Especially when those harmed by it are those who are building something even though they face challenges from racism and bias.. To quote another world leader Ghandi said that "nonviolence is the summit of bravery." Maybe it's not realistic to expect that people climb that summit but we can hope.
Im not excusing it, I just don’t care because it is a minor concern compared to the treatment of marginalized groups in this country.
Respectfully I disagree. The idea that supporting the protesters and expecting looting is NOT the same same as saying black people cannot “help themselves and are violent”. If you treat a group of people (any group) poorly long enough, there will be riots and where there are riots there is looting.
Except for when my wife's stolen credit card was used to buy $1200 worth of gift cards. Coincidentally, the camera at the register of that exact same Target was conveniently inoperative.
Whenever you start quoting Reagan on race relations you should probably stop and think first. Just because these people have spent hundreds of years under the thumb of white supremacy and get murdered in the streets by those that are supposed to protect them. That just because? Seriously dude?
I predict things are gonna kick off and there will be multiple deaths. The country is too much on edge and people from the fringes are gonna capitalize, too much burn it down mentality.
