About the recent Berkeley protests
Feb. 2nd, 2017 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
garoteKerry and I watched a live broadcast of it from some reporters standing in the midst of the protesters. It was a legit news channel though I forget which one. We heard the helicopters circling overhead, as our little house is only about a mile away from the Berkeley campus.
We were both more amused than anything. My reaction was, "hey alright, more authentic free speech!", as I cut farmer's market leeks into sections for the soup I was making, and Kerry fed the cat.
Most of the news organizations that reported it did a responsible thing - they pointed out that the demonstration was peaceful and orderly for hours up until a smaller group of individuals showed up, with covered faces and black clothing, and began tearing down the police barricades and throwing fireworks and flares. That group was clearly intent on causing such a disturbance that the whole event had to be cancelled. Not a move I would have made, but that's often the way it is with protest crowds. Less responsible people use them as cover. The same way wild-eyed vigilantes accumulate guns and training in the cover provided by hunters, patriots, and veterans.
The police also acted very responsibly here as well. Their attitude was "better a few tens of thousands of dollars in property damage than a million-plus dollars in medical attention and lawsuits against the city". They hung back and acted as protection - and a strong defense - for everyone there. No one from any side said a word against the police.
Of course, our dickhead in chief fanned the flames, and even floated the idea of defunding the lab system because of it. I mean wow, could he be any more utterly out of touch with American principles? What a dickhead. I never expected I could loathe him even more than I did last year, but boy oh boy, I do.
On the internet, of course, the whole thing is being discussed as though the students were devouring live babies and screaming "HAIL SATAN" and burning copies of the constitution in great heaps. This is by and large all anyone outside the city limits of Berkeley will hear of it ... and with fake-news editorials "covering" the incident with all the impartiality of a lynch mob, I expect the stink will be intense, and circle the Earth.
Raising hell when a well-established hatemonger tries to hold court in your home town, is not a "violation of free speech". Why would anyone claim that it is? Because they think they have a "right" to keep other people silent while they bloviate? The mind, it boggles.
So yes, comment boards all over are exploding with messages claiming that the entire city of Berkeley is "whiners" and "babies" and "against free speech" and "violent thugs" and so on and so on. But to me, these commenters are just angry, scared people, venting spleen from the safety of their dens. Lacking the sheer guts that the Berkeley people demonstrated by actually showing up, in person, and putting themselves in the situation. As I said before, and will keep saying, the only way to win is not to play.
This brouhaha will last about a week and they’ll move on to some other thing to spray down with misguided vitriol, and we’ll all carry on.
Hey! Spot poll! Who thinks Trump will actually be president for 4 years?
To tell you the truth, I’m actually getting a bit worried that in about a year he is going to start a war. North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, perhaps some kind of scuffle with China. And missiles will fly, and planes will start ramming buildings again. And of course it will all be more and more proof of how necessary the war is, and how the inhuman "other" must be exterminated, and we better not vote against a sitting president during wartime, because that would send the wrong message to The Enemy...
Ugh. I tried to stop watching internet news. I've already abandoned Facebook. Every time I lift the lid, nothing but hate comes screaming out. Is this the future of information warfare? Dump toxic waste in the community pool, so the effort of cleaning it out serves as a distraction, and you can move funds and pass laws while backs are turned?
We were both more amused than anything. My reaction was, "hey alright, more authentic free speech!", as I cut farmer's market leeks into sections for the soup I was making, and Kerry fed the cat.
Most of the news organizations that reported it did a responsible thing - they pointed out that the demonstration was peaceful and orderly for hours up until a smaller group of individuals showed up, with covered faces and black clothing, and began tearing down the police barricades and throwing fireworks and flares. That group was clearly intent on causing such a disturbance that the whole event had to be cancelled. Not a move I would have made, but that's often the way it is with protest crowds. Less responsible people use them as cover. The same way wild-eyed vigilantes accumulate guns and training in the cover provided by hunters, patriots, and veterans.
The police also acted very responsibly here as well. Their attitude was "better a few tens of thousands of dollars in property damage than a million-plus dollars in medical attention and lawsuits against the city". They hung back and acted as protection - and a strong defense - for everyone there. No one from any side said a word against the police.
Of course, our dickhead in chief fanned the flames, and even floated the idea of defunding the lab system because of it. I mean wow, could he be any more utterly out of touch with American principles? What a dickhead. I never expected I could loathe him even more than I did last year, but boy oh boy, I do.On the internet, of course, the whole thing is being discussed as though the students were devouring live babies and screaming "HAIL SATAN" and burning copies of the constitution in great heaps. This is by and large all anyone outside the city limits of Berkeley will hear of it ... and with fake-news editorials "covering" the incident with all the impartiality of a lynch mob, I expect the stink will be intense, and circle the Earth.
Raising hell when a well-established hatemonger tries to hold court in your home town, is not a "violation of free speech". Why would anyone claim that it is? Because they think they have a "right" to keep other people silent while they bloviate? The mind, it boggles.
So yes, comment boards all over are exploding with messages claiming that the entire city of Berkeley is "whiners" and "babies" and "against free speech" and "violent thugs" and so on and so on. But to me, these commenters are just angry, scared people, venting spleen from the safety of their dens. Lacking the sheer guts that the Berkeley people demonstrated by actually showing up, in person, and putting themselves in the situation. As I said before, and will keep saying, the only way to win is not to play.
This brouhaha will last about a week and they’ll move on to some other thing to spray down with misguided vitriol, and we’ll all carry on.
Hey! Spot poll! Who thinks Trump will actually be president for 4 years?
To tell you the truth, I’m actually getting a bit worried that in about a year he is going to start a war. North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, perhaps some kind of scuffle with China. And missiles will fly, and planes will start ramming buildings again. And of course it will all be more and more proof of how necessary the war is, and how the inhuman "other" must be exterminated, and we better not vote against a sitting president during wartime, because that would send the wrong message to The Enemy...
Ugh. I tried to stop watching internet news. I've already abandoned Facebook. Every time I lift the lid, nothing but hate comes screaming out. Is this the future of information warfare? Dump toxic waste in the community pool, so the effort of cleaning it out serves as a distraction, and you can move funds and pass laws while backs are turned?
no subject
Date: 2017-02-02 11:57 pm (UTC)Regarding the war, he probably will need something as an argument for keeping him 4 more years.
Some follow-on thoughts.
Date: 2017-02-03 08:11 am (UTC)If there was a nasty, entrenched war over which My Little Pony character was best, Trump would start slagging off Rainbow Dash and calling Twilight Sparkle a true patriot, or vice-versa. And Milo would launch a campaign titled "Applejack Is An Ugly Lesbian Bitch". And I would laugh quite hard. But alas, we live in less whimsical times.
I agree that if they were completely ignored and had no forum it would be the best outcome. But it is not liberals, or the left, that are giving them the forum. If it were up to the liberal contingent on those UC campuses - Davis, Berkeley - Milo would simply never be invited in the first place. It was the republican contingent that invited him, that paid for the extra security - knowing in advance it would be against the wishes of many, many other students - and that cried salty crocodile tears of victimization when he was driven away. UCLA had the benefit of seeing what happened at the other UCs, and they did deprive Milo of his forum, by rescinding their invitation. But would you consider that the best outcome, for purposes of free exchange?
No, neither would I. But nor am I going to take an entitled crap on the people who came out on a cold Wednesday night and stood in opposition to him, just because a bunch of other people - pissed off assholes, for sure, and deserving of arrest and prosecution - infiltrated the crowd and hijacked the protest.
Crowds will gather in support of Trump and his twisted worldview, and crowds will gather in opposition to it. I know which crowd I would rather be in. Some assholes broke windows and threw flares? That's horrible. But you want to compare apples to apples? Six people were shot dead, and nineteen injured, last Sunday by a Trump supporter. Why not make that comparison? Do you hear all those crickets in the mass media? That's that comparison, not being made. Instead it's UC Berkeley, 24-7, and hand-wringing over a few broken windows.
That's a real shame.
Right or wrong, the groups will all be lumped together, yes -- by bystanders and self-important holier-than-thou types on the distant internet and in distant halls of power. But the question is, what are we personally going to choose to believe? As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a resistance movement anywhere in history that wasn't occasionally spiked by a collection of bad actors - sometimes even false-flag actors or hired thugs - whose antics made some moderates wag their heads in dismissal. "Oh they're hurting their own cause, how sad and pathetic." Well yeah. Fact. But every Martin Luther King movement makes cover for any number of Malcolm X agitators. Those moderates who would crap on the movement because of that, ... what good are they anyway?