“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - CS Lewis.
Symbolic actions like painting "BLM" on a street are cute and all, but that doesn't mean they supported the protests. In fact, the cities such as New York and Chicago had some of the most violent suppression of protests by their police forces, despite loudly claiming to support BLM. Actions ultimately speak louder than words.
> At least 200 cities in the U.S. had imposed curfews by early June 2020, while more than 30 states and Washington, D.C., activated over 96,000 National Guard and State Guard service members.[33][34][35][36] The deployment constituted the largest military operation other than war in U.S. history.[37]
Yes, I know since I was part of the protests back then. But there's an incredibly big difference between cracking down on a protest and invoking emergency powers.
In America, we didn’t need emergency powers to shoot BLM protesters. Or Civil Rights protesters, or the unarmed veterans of the Bonus Army, or union members — historically it’s fine to shoot protesters.
Conservatives are just snowflakes because it happened to their guys just one time.
Okay, so if I show you an example of a protest with people that weren't masking or social distancing, you'd be in favor of using emergency powers against protestors that were protesting for racial justice?
What glib nonsense. We had authoritarian right wing protesters -- who don't believe in democracy -- trying to topple our elected government. Imposing their will on the people in Ottawa for weeks, threatening violence and disturbing the peace.
i.e. Not constitutionally responsible to the people.
Words have meaning, as do actions, sir, and you're choose to ignore both because of your partisan blind spots.
> There was no "peaceful" presentation of grievance. There was weeks of civil disobedience and actual acts of violence.
Partisans love to play this game, where they judge a large group of people by the worst possible interpretation of the actions of a tiny subset of them.
For a protest which some estimates say peaked at ~18,000, this was the resulting set of "violent" charges:
"12 charges of assaulting a peace officer; six charges of assault; three charges of assault or intimidation with a weapon; five charges of possessing a weapon dangerous to public peace; two charges of carrying a concealed weapon; one charge of possessing a restricted firearm; and four charges of uttering threats of death or bodily harm." [0]
Obviously this is not acceptable, but the idea that the protesters as a group were "authoritarians" because 0.01% of them got violent is hysterical nonsense.
Charges were low because the police refused to do their job. This is stated on record.
(Also... Partisan hardly describes me. I've never voted Liberal in my life and have been opposed to this PM since day one. Ask any of my annoyed coworkers and friends.)
So only "bougie federal workers" live in Ottawa? And not being able to sleep for days on end is just "getting annoyed"
That's... amazing. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
And you're accusing me of convoluted scenarios.
This is deep down nested in replies of replies, so unlikely to be seen but...We have plenty of members of HN from Ottawa. Tell me, Ottawa people, what do you think of this?
And yes, they should have been arrested. Too bad the police refused to do their job.
