Cenkrett

It’s dismaying that millions of people would sooner heed the covid-19 advice of a celebrity than that of an expert scientist, but since that is the case, popular celebrities need to get off of their asses and start parroting the experts’ advice as much as possible.  Whatever gets people to listen to the experts, even indirectly, that’s the route we need to take.

If they weren’t so reprehensible, I would almost be inclined to feel sorry for people who have so little going for them that the thing they are most proud of in life is their race.  It’s not just offensive, it’s deeply pathetic.

Even if I liked almost everything about Trump -- I don’t; I utterly despise him -- I could never support him because he actively impedes efforts to stem the tide of climate change.  That’s both unforgivable and incalculably dangerous.  Climate change will be the predominant issue of the next generation or two (if not longer), and it needs to be addressed as soon as possible before it is too late to prevent serious harm.  I could never support any politician who does not have dealing with climate change as a priority, no matter what other attributes they might have.

If Trump loses the upcoming Presidential election - a prospect which is looking increasingly likely, given his rapidly plummeting poll numbers and the plethora of political fires that he is stoking rather than dousing -- I can’t imagine that he would accept the results.  Could you picture Trump conceding defeat?  I can’t; I doubt he is even capable of doing so.  Most likely he would dispute the election results, decrying it as rigged and rife with fraud, claiming that he was the rightful winner.  That would be perfectly in character for him, and he has already carefully set the stage for doing it.  He would likely implore his tens of millions of followers to view Biden’s Presidency as illegitimate, and to act accordingly.  It would be an absolute political disaster, and could even lead to violence.  From where we stand now, it’s a very real possibility.  I only hope that, should they win, the Democrats are prepared to counter it.

If you don’t have the ability to effectively legally defend yourself when one of your rights is violated, you don’t actually have that right, you just have the appearance of it.

The United States has certainly done far worse things than naming military bases after literal traitorous militant rebels and placing monuments to them throughout the nation, but it has done few things quite as painfully stupid as that.  Even if what they had stood for and fought for wasn’t utterly heinous - and it absolutely was - idolizing traitorous enemies is about as unpatriotic as you can be without taking up arms against your country yourself.  If not for the deep undercurrent of bigotry running through this nation, they would have never been able to get away with something so blatantly anti-American for so many years.

For that matter, there’s no such thing as an immutable or natural right.  All of our rights are made up.  They are fabrications which we all agree on, for our mutual benefit, and for the stability and health of our society.  The fact that they are made up doesn’t give them less value, but it does mean that any one of them can be changed at any time, if we as a society deem it necessary.  That’s a feature, not a bug.  Having malleable, impermanent rights allows us to let our society evolve to reflect changing values and needs.  We can shed old ones that are irrelevant or counterproductive, and instate new ones that we find we are sorely lacking.  We have done it many times, and we should always consider it to be an option.

When I argue against the private ownership of high-powered weaponry like assault rifles, I’m not saying it isn’t a legal right.  Of course it’s a right.  You are legally allowed to own them.  Don’t patronize by citing the Bill of Rights; I know very well what’s in it.  You are correct that you have the right to own assault rifles and other high-powered weaponry. I’m not arguing that it isn’t your right, but that it shouldn’t be.  The right to have those weapons isn’t a natural immutable law, nor is it critical to the basic stability of the nation.  It is entirely optional.  We made up our rights, we invented them, and we can reinvent them when necessary.  We have done it before and will surely do it again.  That right can be changed, and it needs to be. So again, I’m not saying that you don’t have the right to own those weapons.  I’m saying that Americans do have the right to own gratuitously powerful weaponry, and that is a problem which we can and should fix.

No matter how you feel about law enforcement, you have to be able to see that police who object to their colleagues facing consequences for violent misconduct are unfit to be police.  If they think they are somehow above the law, they should at the very least have nothing to do with enforcing it.

If the police don’t need military-grade weapons -- and they certainly don’t; it’s a surefire recipe for excessive force -- then private citizens absolutely don’t need them.  Using private citizens’ access to powerful weaponry as an excuse for police to have similarly powerful weaponry is the entirely wrong way to look at it.  Neither of them should have those weapons.

In short, it is the law that is meant to protect the people.  The police don’t do that; they enforce the law.  That’s a crucial distinction.  The police aren’t here to protect you, they’re here to ensure that the law is followed without exception.  Protecting people is simply not their job.  Perhaps it should be, but it isn’t, and we can’t afford to pretend that it is.

If you ask police or their supporters what their justification is for the existence of the police, they will almost invariably say that the police protect the populace from crime of all sorts.  However, unless you get all of your information about police from their overabundant propaganda (like cop TV shows), it quickly becomes clear that the police aren’t there to protect the people; that was never their intended purpose, and they make no real attempt to do so. The police are there to enforce the law, with force if necessary, and frequently with at least the threat of using that force.  Some of the laws they enforce may exist to protect people, but the police themselves don’t.  Most of the time, they are essentially aggressive bureaucrats who back up their rules with the threat of force.  When it comes down to a choice between protecting a person or upholding the law, the police will almost always choose the latter.  That’s their job.  That’s what they’re for.  It’s in the very name “law enforcement”. So if their oft-stated justification for existing is not something they do, is their existence justified?  Perhaps enforcing the law with the implied (or sometimes explicit) threat of force is sufficient justification for the existence of the police, and perhaps it isn’t.  That’s another conversation.  But I don’t ever want to hear anymore about how the police are there to protect the people.  That’s not their job and it never was.  We all need to stop pretending that the police are there to protect us; they are the government’s legal enforcers and nothing more.

The question of defunding the police is very complicated, and bears a lot of nuanced debate.  However, the question of demilitarizing the police is much more straightforward.  There is no excuse for the police having military weapons and using them against civilians.  It almost guarantees the use of excessive force.  Military weapons are meant for wars.  If we allow police to have them, we turn our cities and towns into war zones.  There is no good reason for the police to have access to that much force; if they need that level of force, they are doing their jobs profoundly wrong.  Supporting the demilitarization of police should be one of the easiest political decisions you make.

That the police respond to legitimate protests about police violence by increasing police violence, when that should by all rights be the last thing they do in response, just highlights how they are a fundamentally violent institution.  Violence is their default answer to problems, and when they see threats to their domination, even in the form of constitutionally-guaranteed peaceful protests, they will use that violence to protect their position.

People don’t comprehend how wealthy the super-rich really are.  Jeff Bezos has about $150 billion.  That’s so much money that the difference between him and someone in the top 0.01% (the top 1% of the top 1%, someone with at least approx $100 million) is greater than the difference between someone in the top 0.01% and someone with the median American net worth.  The median American is closer in wealth to someone with $100 million than someone with $100 million is to the wealth of Jeff Bezos.  That is how rich he is.

Rioting might not necessarily be prudent, but given the circumstances, it’s certainly more than understandable.

The State claims the exclusive right to inflict violence on citizens.  If any other group behaved the way the police do, with their indiscriminate brutality, they would be considered domestic terrorists.  This was true before these protests - it’s always true - but now you can’t pretend not to see it.