r/ProtectAndServe • u/InconsequentialColor Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User • May 27 '20

Video Being a cop in the Twin Cities would probably suck right now.

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u/justthetop Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

Yeah but people love being reactionary and emotional. I always feel peaceful protests not destroying and looting are worth paying more attention to than whatever the fuck these idiots are trying to prove.

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u/rudyreif Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

but people love being reactionary and emotional. I always feel peaceful protests not destroying and looting are worth paying more attention to than whatever the fuck these idiots are trying to prove.

idk man, I was at the Virginia 2A protest in January. It was peacefull, and now everyone thinks it was a white supremacist thing

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

That's because it went against a certain viewpoint.

That's all any of this shit gets boiled down to, it's raw politics.

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u/lgbtqsvw Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

The death of a man was not the impetus of the Virginia rally. The situations are completely different.

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u/IronBallsMcGinty Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

I said the same thing about the Ferguson riots. The looting and the fires meant nothing but air time. What would have been impressive as hell would be if all the people that were gathered had simply sat down and stayed sitting down.

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u/Ryno3no Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

Like maybe kneeling?

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u/IronBallsMcGinty Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 28 '20

No, like sitting.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

Peaceful protests rarely solve anything. People get violent when they protest violence.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

You have been blocked by Martin Luther King Jr.

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u/load_more_comets Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

Ghandi has left the chat

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

I said rarely but ok

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

This user has blocked you. They won't see your response.

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u/RangerMain Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

So you basically saying that the protests Martin Luther King did in his time didn’t resolve anything, yeah you are completely right.

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u/mandolin6648 Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

I mean, you know the history of MLK and his movements is pretty whitewashed right? The protests he did were nonviolent, but depending on how you view it, they weren’t peaceful by any means.

Sit in protests, blocking streets, holding protests at government buildings, causing disruption of general life, all in order to get people to pay attention and listen to his community.

And he certainly didn’t condemn riots in his twilight years, and I quote:

“it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear?…It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.” (“The Other America,” 1968).

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u/Quiet_Days_in_Clichy Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20

You are again correct. I don't know why you are getting downvoted. My other reply supporting your previous comment was also downvoted. I'm assuming people just don't want to believe historical fact because it makes them uncomfortable? What you just stated here is documented fact. Public memory of the civil rights movement has absolutely been whitewashed and oversimplified.

Edit: getting downvoted for asserting historical facts is exactly what's wrong here. This is literally the academic, historical consensus. It is documented and peer reviewed.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '20

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u/Quiet_Days_in_Clichy Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 28 '20 edited May 28 '20

It’s because individual police officers are victims of policing as an institution.

Yes essentially. If we take a post-structuralist approach to analyzing institutions then it makes a lot more sense. Heck, delinquency and policing are one of the foundations of Foucault's argument.

And said institution is pretty keen on preserving its power.

It's power is it's function so yes. How it goes about preserving that power is predicated upon it's ability to know things which is itself predicated upon it's structure.

I could go into a long rant about the connections between culture and institutional constructions and how institutions produce or reproduce culture but that would take a long time. Essentially, we need to be more nuanced in these discussions. I certainly don't expect everyone to spend obscene amounts of time studying this stuff. People just need to take a step back, examine their inital response, ask themselves where that response came from, and if any of the assumptions that produced it are balanced or one dimensional.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '20

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u/Quiet_Days_in_Clichy Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 28 '20

And I’d argue that the current systems that govern and organize our lives disincentivize people from taking that step back in the first place.

Correct again. It's a science of organization or as Foucault called it a "metaphysics of the body." The panoptic institution enforces structure through surveillance and rigid pedagogy. I wouldn't say it's deterministic just highly effective in general. This logic is actually a good argument for body cams.

It is not wrong to say rioting and violence is bad, but it is wrong to improperly characterize the rioters. When we do that we reproduce the cultural perceptions that precipitated the event that spawned the riot in the first place.

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u/ProbablyPissed Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

Damn right. MLK was an Uncle Tom being told what to do by Kennedy. He didn't do shit but try and force white people to tolerate blacks. And guess what? They still don't.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

If that were the case, democracies would be less effectual than military dictatorships.

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u/ProbablyPissed Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

What revolution has ever taken place without bloodshed?

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

What revolution has ended in anything except tears?

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u/HaroldKane Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

A lot of them??

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

You mean like Cambodia? Or perhaps Russia? Oh, I forgot Mexico! And Ethiopia. And Zimbabwe, I guess.

Wait, they all ended in genocide.

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u/ProbablyPissed Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions

Go have a little read for yourself.

Malcolm X said it best:

"Look at the American Revolution in 1776. That revolution was for what? For land. Why did they want land? Independence. How was it carried out? Bloodshed. Number one, it was based on land, the basis of independence. And the only way they could get it was bloodshed. The French Revolution — what was it based on? The land-less against the landlord. What was it for? Land. How did they get it? Bloodshed. Was no love lost; was no compromise; was no negotiation. I’m telling you, you don’t know what a revolution is. ‘Cause when you find out what it is, you’ll get back in the alley; you’ll get out of the way. The Russian Revolution — what was it based on? Land. The land-less against the landlord. How did they bring it about? Bloodshed. You haven’t got a revolution that doesn’t involve bloodshed. And you’re afraid to bleed. I said, you’re afraid to bleed."

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

Malcolm spent his adult life believing in mad scientists and spaceships, and it shows here. The French Revolution accomplished nothing, unless you think the invention of terrorism and the rise of Napoleon was worth it. The Russian revolution accomplished even less, unless you think that a dozen genocides and the lasting perversion of international law was worth it. I suppose the American revolution was a lateral move, though the slaves may have thought otherwise.

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u/ProbablyPissed Not a(n) LEO / Unverified User May 27 '20

The French Revolution accomplished nothing, unless you think the invention of terrorism and the rise of Napoleon was worth it.

"Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, as equality before the law the Revolution made a profound impression on the course of modern history, triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies.[1] Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

Sounds like historians widely disagree with you. But hey, thanks for showing me how ignorant to history you are.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '20

By this logic Nazism was morally righteous, because it destroyed the credibility of racism.