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Anyone who attempts by force to silence the voice of someone they don't agree with is inherently wrong (except forum Mods--they are doing the Lord's work).

PROTESTING Milo speaking is not anti-speech, it's SPEECH.
(referencing earlier riots)

ATTACKING Trump supporters, bused in or beamed in, is not acceptable.

And I'm a pinko liberal, albeit one from Texas that owns guns.

Both sides have a right to make their voice heard, but it must be non-violent, including the police.

If the women's march taught us anything, it's that millions can voice dissent without resulting to violence. The violence blunts the edge of their message.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Man, I just don't know what's going on in the Bay Area anymore. Back in my day, the serious protestors used to escalate by removing some clothing.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the sentiment seems to me to be that because our system produced a President like Donald Trump, who is perceived as akin to a fascist or Nazi, that the system is broken beyond repair, and violent tactics are justified. There's a big dose of Noam Chomsky-style thinking, where the United States is viewed fundamentally as an evil and oppressive imperialistic force that needs to be taken down and replaced by an anarcho-syndicalist utopia. This last sentence is a bit generous though, as I don't think most of the people involved have a worldview more complicated than what was on the Rage Against the Machine album.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
the big key here is that in general this stuff is not widespread, it's localized to a handful of areas that most people already see as political hotspots, and the actual violence is rather limited and tame by the standards of political violence, nobody is being killed or maimed or crippled for life, buildings arent burning down, law enforcement is neither fleeing nor overreacting in most cases thus far, etc. Many a sporting event has seen more violence than this.

Hopefully that remains the case.

I hope your right as well, but the crossover between Trump supporters and gun enthusiasts coupled with Antifas affinity for lower level violence like punching and fireworks seems like a recipe for a tragedy. Hopefully it doesn't take a tragedy for people to understand the truism that violence begets violence.

 Easy E wrote:
Wasn't this topic why the US Politics thread got locked? Then this thread starts?

I am so confused.

Indeed, we seem to be done with just discussing the riots, and have moved onto the wider discussion of how us politics has got to this point. So we're done here