The Violence thread

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We have a Covid-19 thread. Now that we're seeing the worst violence in decades I figured we could use a thread for this, too.

This is bigger than Ferguson, Rodney King, even Watts. This feels like civil war. It's no longer just about blacks seeking justice, getting headlines for a few weeks before moving on to the next news cycle. It's quickly becoming the Have-Nots against the power elite. I think future historians will look at the protests in reaction to the death of George Floyd as this civil war's Fort Sumpter.

It's hitting home in little ways. I'm at work. We're on a quiet street in Scottsdale. Right now there's a locksmith replacing the broken locks on our two doors. Someone tried to break into the office last night. They didn't get in but one of the lock cylinders simply fell out onto the ground this morning. Nothing like that has ever happened here before.

Someone smashed up all the furniture around the pool last night at our little 23 unit apartment complex in Phoenix. Nothing like that has ever happened there before.

I always hoped that if it ever came to this point, the police and military would not fire on their own people. In some places police are putting down their batons and taking the knee with the protestors. It happened last night in Phoenix. So that gives me a just a little hope that maybe this time, things will be different.

Destruction of the good is terrible. Creative destruction of the bad is long overdue.

Your thoughts?

[GRG55]

Re: The Violence thread

Few of the influential, connected power elite will suffer any serious consequences from this. Other than Donald J. Trump, who it appears has squandered his re-election chances. Even some of his most prominent media advocates have turned on him and are openly critical now.

The violence and the looting is mostly about the Have-Nots against the Have-a-Little, and the destruction of the public symbols and institutions that define and make our societies work on behalf of the population as a whole. Starting with the police forces. Just like some third world republic, such as Egypt, the USA is rapidly evolving to the status of a nation where the only institution the people respect and trust is the Army.

[Mega]

Re: The Violence thread

Trump has not handled it well, nor the DNC...............what needs to happen is a "DE-Nastyness of the police.

Mike

[Mega]

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[Mega]

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[Mega]

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[shiny!]

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From the NY Times, no less...

When the Protesters Carried Guns

By James Bennet
Editorial Page Editor
Grimly surveying a country she described as a tinderbox, our columnist Michelle Goldberg noted over the weekend that the protesters in Minneapolis had faced “a far harsher police response than anything faced by the country’s gun-toting anti-lockdown activists.”

It’s a scenario I’ve wondered about, and maybe you have, too: What if the protesters in the streets of America’s cities had adopted the tactics of the anti-lockdown agitators? Would they have gotten results faster? Instead of calling them thugs, would President Trump have called them “very good people,” as he did the heavily armed white protesters in Michigan?
There’s an illuminating precedent, as you may know: On May 2, 1967, about two dozen members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, carrying loaded shotguns and pistols, walked onto the grounds of the State Capitol in Sacramento, Calif.

They strolled past a group of eighth-graders gathered for a picnic lunch with California’s Republican governor, a former actor named Ronald Reagan.
“The students stopped and stared in amazement as the Black Panthers marched right by,” wrote Adam Winkler in his history “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.” You can see snippets of video of the incident here and here, but I recommend watching Stanley Nelson Jr.’s absorbing documentary, “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,” which composes a rich narrative from interviews and archived footage.

The Panthers made their way into the Capitol building, up the steps and into the visitors gallery. There they stood with their guns, quietly listening to the proceedings before security escorted them out. No shot was fired; no law was broken.

Why were they there? To protest gun control measures that members of the assembly, and Reagan, were eager to see passed. Why the Republican interest in gun control? Because Huey Newton, a founder of the Panthers, had learned in classes at San Francisco Law School that under California law you could carry a gun in public, as long as it was visible.
Armed Panthers had begun tailing police through the streets of Oakland. “When the police stopped a black person, the Panthers would stand off to the side and shout out legal advice,” Winkler wrote. He quoted Newton as saying that with “weapons in our hands, we were no longer their subjects but their equals.”

When he reached the top of the Capitol steps that day in 1967, Bobby Seale, the Panthers’ other founder, issued a prepared statement. He said the proposed legislation was “aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror, brutality, murder, and repression of black people.” The time had come, he continued, “for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.”

That same day, Reagan declared, “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”

He also said, “I don’t think loaded guns is the way to solve a problem that ought to be solved between people of good will, and anyone who would approve of this kind of demonstration must be out of their mind.”

The legislation passed, with a new provision prohibiting anyone but police from bringing a loaded gun into the Capitol. Carrying a loaded gun on a California street became punishable by up to five years in prison.

Today, the party of Reagan advocates a right to carry a concealed gun in public, while black Americans - who have flocked to their own gun association since Trump was elected - continue to struggle to be treated as equal by the police.

[Mega]

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[shiny!]

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Damn, he makes too much sense. This global social unrest is about more than racism and less than racism; more than police brutality and less than police brutality. It's organic but it's also being orchestrated and "enhanced." I strongly suspect that neither the puppets nor the puppet masters truly understand why they're making their decisions they are making.

Mobbing behavior happening globally during a pandemic is no accident. It's not just a sudden attack of conscience about social injustice. It's not just a stress response or rebellion against prolonged lockdown. I suspect it is Covid-19 itself altering its hosts' behavior.

Listen to Robert Sapolsky describe how infectious organisms change their hosts' behavior in order to increase their chance of replicating:

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Sounds like the T-virus?

[shiny!]

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Sounds like the T-virus?

What's the T-virus? Is it from a game?

Sapolsky was talking about Toxoplasma gondii, at least in the beginning. Later he went on to show how violent cultures can become peaceful practically overnight. By the end they were discussing our criminal justice system; how 25% of inmates on death row have a medical history of head trauma to the front of the head, which houses the frontal cortex.

[touchring]

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What's the T-virus? Is it from a game?

Sapolsky was talking about Toxoplasma gondii, at least in the beginning. Later he went on to show how violent cultures can become peaceful practically overnight. By the end they were discussing our criminal justice system; how 25% of inmates on death row have a medical history of head trauma to the front of the head, which houses the frontal cortex.

T-virus - https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Tyrant_Virus

Tyrant Virus, otherwise known as the t-Virus, is the general name given to a series of mutant Progenitor virus strains. Initially developed by Umbrella Pharmaceuticals in the late 1960s, the primary goal of the "t-Virus Project" was to effectively eliminate the need for a large-scale conventional army and generate revenue to go to their eugenics program, the Wesker Project. This required two things: the virus had to be highly-contagious to the point of infecting an entire target population and guarantee a 100% mortality rate.[1][2] Such a virus was impossible due to such contagions' tendencies to kill too many people at once and prevent further spread. By 1978 development moved from creating a lethal, highly-contagious virus to one that would mutate hosts to become physically stronger and remain alive despite organ failures and severe brain damage, the latter leading to murderous aggression and an obsessive hunger to the state of cannibalism

[shiny!]

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Thank you for enlightening me. Sounds much more exciting than Toxoplasmosis. All Toxo tends to do is make us feel attracted to danger, causing men to get into more motorcycle accidents.

[Mega]

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[Mega]

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