Chaos in USA

[Capetonian]

People are posting a black empty space on their FB pages in support of Floyd. Do you think it would be OK for me to post a picture of a Robertson's Golllywog sitting in a dark room on a dark night?

[Undried Plum]

Michael Krieger writes rather well on the matter.

[Seenenough]

Threatening to use troops against your own people is the signature of a truly fascist regime!

We got ourselves a real would be dictator here folks! What a surprise.

The National Guard has always been used to deal with riots and public lawlessness when the Police become overwhelmed.Every State has a National Guard that is under the control of the Governor of each state.Each State controls its own Police also.There is a big difference between the Guard and the Army.

Just about the entire country has an issue with the murder of George Floyd and almost everyone agrees that people have a right to protest peacefully.

Throwing a brick or a Molitov Coctail at a Policeman or Guardsman ,while your buddies are looting stores and setting fire to anything in sight ,and then putting your hands up when the police advance on you to arrest you can hardly be described as peaceful protest.

[Boac]

images.jpg (12.87 KiB) Viewed 214 times

Jesus Christ!!

No, Donald (J for Jenius) Trump, actually. Nobody knows more about God than I do. (Hey, Mikey - what's this dumb book you say I have to hold?)

[PHXPhlyer]

The most sickening part of this whole thing is watching the looters on live TV breaking into stores uncontested and hauling away their loot while police are otherwise dealing with crowd control of the legitimate protesters. They are also the same types who throw bottles, rocks, etc. at the police who then react against the whole of the group.
It ties Trump's theatrics yesterday as the other side of the same coin.

PP

[Undried Plum]

images.jpg

Jesus Christ!!

No, Donald (J for Jenius) Trump, actually. Nobody knows more about God than I do. (Hey, Mikey - what's this dumb book you say I have to hold?)

I have never seen anyone hold a Bible, or a Quran or Talmud or Geeta or whatever, the way he's holding that book. It's a truly bizarre pose.

I wonder how many times he's held a book in his hand in the past fifty years, or ever. He seems to be very unfamiliar with the object.

[PHXPhlyer]

It looked like he was a model showing it in an ad.

Order now ...only $19.95, but wait...

PP

[G-CPTN]

Is there a chapel at Mar-a-Laga?

[PHXPhlyer]

I think it is probably called the Pro Shop.

PP

[Undried Plum]

There is a big difference between the Guard and the Army.

Not really. Soldiers with guns shooting people and beating the crap out of 'em.

No real difference, in reality.

It'll make no difference to the victims whether they are shot by soldiers from the 82nd or 101st Airborne or local National guard drongos or State Troopers or ornery arsehole cops like Chauvin.

The problem is not the detail of the insignia. The problem is the ingrained fascism that is represented by the fasces and the faeces who administer fascism.

[boing]

Too many posters are making points based on total ignorance and media reports.

Understand this.

The basic protests are accepted as valid and no one, no one, is objecting to them.

There is an element using the protests as a cover for engineering more confrontations with the police.

The protestors are genuinely demonstrating against police violence, the provocateurs are trying to foment police violence to force social change and as with any revolutionary group the object is to tear down the present social structure because they see this as more achievable than making changes via the normal political process.

The core provocateurs are few in number but they are gaining numerical support through co-opting young indealists.

There are looters who are taking advantage of the chaos to damage and steal. The looters are an embarrassment to the genuine protestors but a useful distraction to the provocateurs.

The provocateurs want more police violence, they want more militaristic action taken against them, they want more spectacular incidents because they can then make the claim to have been right all along.

Politicians and local government are in a panic. If they shut down the protests they are claimed by the protestors and media to be condoning police violence, if they do not do something to stop the riots they are labelled as useless by the general population.

Carrying out a complete retraining of the US national police force to a more "sympathetic" attitude is a ten year task. It is not clear how effective the remaining police departments could be in the interim as they are meanwhile deluged with a mass of new conflicting rules. It is not clear how effective a future police force under the new ideas would be, would they be law enforcers or baby sitters? Certainly many present police officers will resign because they see their lives in danger if they cannot handle fast developing situations without continual approval from above.

The average American is taking a wait and see attitude. The question will be when they have seen enough because this is the point at which the politicians and administrators will have to take a firm position or be ignored completely.

Particularly do not take the actions of a small group of rioters to represent the viewpoint of the American people. Throughout the country I would guess attendance at the protests and riots involves 20 or 30,000 people out of a population of 300,000,000. It is the balance that will decide the outcome either by pressure on local authorities or, in the longer term, by the ballot box. Certainly almost everyone objects to excessive police violence but that does not mean that they support violence and rioting as a means of removing police violence.

Presently the riots are a problem in major urban areas. If riots induced by trouble makers start to move to smaller communities there will be considerable violence and the communities and local police forces will simply shrug their shoulders and order another beer.

Unfortunately for the anti-Trumpers I see this situation as a great gift to him. The riots distract from the Covid problems, because of the short attention span of the media the criticism of Trump has swung away from his handling of Covid to his handling of the riots. He is bouncing the responsibilty for handling the riots to the States where it actually belongs but he is threatening Federal action if the States fail. Since most of the riots are in Democratically controlled communities he can criticise the Democrats for lack of effective response and then claim to be a hero for helping out. If he gets this response correct he goes into the elections with a tremendous boost. The great thing for him at the moment is that he does not need to do anything to succeed, he only has to wait for the States to ask for help thus demonstrating their own failure. Of course, his threat to use the US military in the rioting areas is totally BS, he would be shot down immediately in the Supreme Courst since this action would be clearly un-Constitutional. This may be a situation where civilians would need to be deputised to reinforce the police.

[Undried Plum]

Is there a chapel at Mar-a-Laga?

I've never been to either of the top two or three floors of Trump Tower (I usually just go up one floor on the escalator and turn right to go to the far corner to have a "rest" in a room designed for the purpose.

I'm told that he has a ceiling in his apartment painted like the Sistine Chapel, which is said to look like something that Louis XIV on LSD would have ordered.

[Boac]

I see this situation as a great gift to him.

You are quite right, but can you rely on him to get it right?

You also forget the punch line of the joke about the Trumpsters who died and went to hell. They found themselves standing chest-deep in water, looking at racks of gold bars, beautiful naked women, luxury cars , a booming Dow and on and on. "Hey guys, said one - this hell ain't that bad!"

A whistle blew and a voice said.................

[PHXPhlyer]

Boing:
Well said!

PP

[Undried Plum]

Good post, Boing.

The provocateurs want more police violence, they want more militaristic action taken against them, they want more spectacular incidents because they can then make the claim to have been right all along.

Sadly, Chump is such a shallow and monodimensional individual that he's giving them what they want.

He's been outwitted by arsehole **** on the street who are even worse than he is.

He's blustering and blundering straight into the trap of escalating instead of attentuating.

That's not Presidential behaviour. That's the behaviour of a mafia-backed property development magnate seeking to bust a labour Union. Only this time he's very seriously tooled up with the biggest and baddest military force(s) that the world has ever known.

[Rwy in Sight]

Threatening to use troops against your own people is the signature of a truly fascist regime!

We got ourselves a real would be dictator here folks! What a surprise.

I thought State has the monopoly of legal violence. I thing we would agree that State Force is not used against all people but only against who cause harm on people's way of making a living. As I am thinking maybe not using legal violence is Facism when an unelected group imposes harm into another.

PS For discussion purposes Facism and facist regime are used with the same meaning on my phrase.

[Undried Plum]

Worst of all, he's desperate.

His approval ratings are in the toilet. The economy is buggered, perhaps for as much as two or even three election cycles. Even Faux News is holding him at arms length like he's a used roll of toilet paper.

He's a cornered rat, and those critters are never nice.

[Undried Plum]

Facism when an unelected group imposes harm into another.

Fascism is the marriage of Corporatism and Statism. They don't, knowingly, impose harm on eachother. They feed off eachother and thrive.

[G-CPTN]

Situation worsens?

[Seenenough]

Unfortunately the media keep on twisting the situation by implying that paid rioters and looters are peaceful protestors.

It is up to each Governor to handle the securing of people and property in his or her State.Some Governors are unfortunately not doing a very good job of it and the media will not criticize them as most of them are all Democrats.Most of the Mayors in each of the US Cities where the rioting and looting is occurring are also Democrats.