Why does the media focus on looting?

[Foolmewunz]

The failure being not shooting to maim after the first broken window.

You're new to this upstanding citizen post-and-run trolling, I take it. Ask some of the gun crowd about "shoot to maim". It's not done.

 

[Biscuit]

No one, and I mean no one, who read or watched the news in the week leading up to the riots can legitimately claim that there was no press coverage.

That is just plain ridiculous.

No one, and I mean no one, who read or watched the news in the week leading up to the riots can legitimately claim there there was the same level of media coverage before as there there is after.

That is just plain rediculous.

 

[phiwum]

No one, and I mean no one, who read or watched the news in the week leading up to the riots can legitimately claim there there was the same level of media coverage before as there there is after.

That is just plain rediculous.

Yes. And if you find anyone doing so, why, we'll all join in on the very satisfying rebuke.

Until then, however, I'm not sure what your point is.

 

[sadhatter]

What i don't understand is the following.

The ire is due to police, right? Then why are these people not loading for bear and storming just police stations? I wouldn't support the wholesale murder of cops, but at least that would make sense in the context of what is happening.

 

[Foolmewunz]

What i don't understand is the following.

The ire is due to police, right? Then why are these people not loading for bear and storming just police stations? I wouldn't support the wholesale murder of cops, but at least that would make sense in the context of what is happening.

The protests are generally due to police and actually target appropriate places like police stations, police HQ and City Hall. And they are not calling for storming the police station, pulling out LEOs, beating them or killing them. They are protesting and trying to get coverage and support for their protest, their issues.

This "riot" didn't stem from a demonstration, though.

The rioters aren't looking to make a political statement. They're looking to make trouble and get a few minutes of mob anarchy going. It's just a right wing meme that the protest marches break up into riots. Even in cities where a confrontation with demonstrators triggers riots/civil disorder, it's generally away from the original demonstration and an entire different group of people.

 

[Travis]

Regarding the highlighted, on no planet in the universe, much less this one, is burning down a senior center an "appropriate" response to systemic POLICE abuses.

None.

What if the police officers in question were hiding out there?

Not many stories about looting. Plenty about how the deceased was intentionally trying to injure himself, but not so much about the looting.

Oh I bet there are stories. Lots of stories about bigfoot too.

Patently ridiculous.

There is no meaningful similarity between the Warsaw uprisings and the understandable but primarily greed fueled criminal looting in Baltimore.

There is no meaningful similarity between the actions of the oppressors in Warsaw and the police in Baltimore.

There is no justification for the rioting and looting in Baltimore than mitigates it to the point that it is reasonable to call it "appropriate".

"Riots" and "looting" are not pejoratives when applied to the rioting and looting in Baltimore.

If they had just attacked the police stations and nothing else would you change your opinion?

I used to have some respect for your opinions.Not anymore.

I am really afraid the rise of the Tea Party..whom I dislike a lot...has now caused an equivalent to rise up on the left.

I've learned the hard way the last few years the best way to beat crazy is with your own crazy.

 

[phiwum]

I've learned the hard way the last few years the best way to beat crazy is with your own crazy.

Some of us wish you wouldn't take that lesson so much to heart. And, indeed, it's hard to see how you've benefitted your various causes by applying this lesson.

Maybe the better bet is to have a well-reasoned conclusion, defend it reasonably, and hope that your correspondent will react appropriately. Because spouting nonsense really does nothing to convince others of anything but your own lack of rationality.

 

[phiwum]

Yes they need to simply accept that the police will get away with it as they have in the past, and that anything they do will simply make the police look better. But don't get angry because of the pointlessness of your lives and deaths, that would be wrong.

Are you familiar with the false dilemma fallacy?

Let me illustrate.

Implicitly, you suggested that there are two alternatives: burning down retirement facilities, or accepting that the police will simply kill a few folks here and there. Now, think hard. Is there possibly a third alternative?

ETA: Thought that this was a new post from Turtle, for some reason, not one from a few days ago. But I think that this answer is still appropriate, so I'll leave it.

 

[fuelair]

Well allow me to get on my soapbox.

Revolutions are nasty and messy. And in a perfect world we wouldn't even need them. But debased and oppressed minorities frequently need them to enact any meaningful change. The elephant in the room we don't want to acknowledge in America is that peaceful protests are now and pretty much always have been a huge waste of time.

No meaningful reform happened in New York regarding gay rights until the Stonewall Riots. In San Francisco the police department made pretty much zero effort to understand their growing gay population until the riots following the trial for the murder of Harvey Milk. The Los Angeles police department thought of race relations as merely a PR problem until the 1992 riots. Only after people got legitimately scared did anyone try to do anything to address the systemic problems they had largely ignored until then.

Fear, it seems, is the only way to actually get people already entrenched in power to change their ways.

Suppose, as an analogy, that you lived in a society where (to borrow something here) people are divided up into castes of short ears and long ears. You grow up your entire life as a long ear knowing that the short ears run everything. Corporations create algorithms to identify names associated with long ears and so discard without even reading most resumes sent in by long ears. Long ears don't get shown the same houses by realtors. They get charged higher interest rates for loans if they can even get them. The police murder them with seeming impunity giving lip service to "sensitivity training" whenever they get caught red handed.

If the short ears would try to reform things maybe things would improve. But they don't. Instead the same problems persist like a festering sore that they hide away hoping no one will notice it. But one day things will be pushed too far. And the result, to put it mildly, will be destructive.

When revolutions come those that might have even been on the side of the oppressed might be caught up in the tide of violence. Was everyone put to the guillotine in France actually guilty of crimes against the peasantry? Almost certainly not. But that is the way these things go.

And I would have happily machine gunned the crowds who stormed the Bastille and put to slow fire those who murdered Lavoisier and a large number of others. And that goes for rioters/looters anywhere. You may be fine with rioters, I am not. And I am also not fine with police who murder/torture, etc. - especially innocent persons. I firmly believe in kill all the bad guys you can - using a well thought out set of definitions of bad. This list includes predatory lenders.

 

[fuelair]

Warsaw: a resistance army fighting against the Nazis.

Baltimore: people destroying and stealing private property.

If these "revolutionaries," in Baltimore believe what you say they believe -that the police need to be "vanquished and defeated"- then why aren't they ...you know....vanquishing and defeating the police? Seems a weird way to start a revolution.

Useful addition for me!!! Warsaw: Anyone in a German uniform is my target/slow death if in SS uniform, very slow if officer.

Baltimore: looters/rioters: shoot on sight if you have no good way of permanently tagging or capturing them without personal harm to you. police: shoot if attempting to harm/kill non-violent protestors. Assist if trying to help people.

Bad times are never an excuse for bad behavior.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Useful addition for me!!! Warsaw: Anyone in a German uniform is my target/slow death if in SS uniform, very slow if officer.

Baltimore: looters/rioters: shoot on sight if you have no good way of permanently tagging or capturing them without personal harm to you. police: shoot if attempting to harm/kill non-violent protestors. Assist if trying to help people.

Bad times are never an excuse for bad behavior.

They are on ISF.

 

[sarge]

What if the police officers in question were hiding out there?

They weren't though.......and even then, it is ridiculous in the extreme to argue that the presence of the police in some place makes it okay to burn and loot that place.

If they had just attacked the police stations and nothing else would you change your opinion?

Of course not. I dislike the police in general .....they are almost all bullies under some circumstances, they all enjoy an unwarranted presumption of honesty, they all ignore severe civil rights abuses by their fellow officers, and a significant minority of them actually commit severe civil rights abuses. There is still no justification in the US for attacking the police in general. Sure, I'd be fine with a cop in the act of unnecessarily harming a citizen being attacked - but random, senseless attacks against anyone wearing a uniform? That is stupidity.

I've learned the hard way the last few years the best way to beat crazy is with your own crazy.

That is really, well........crazy.

 

[Ziggurat]

What if the police officers in question were hiding out there?

What if the police officers in question were actually reptilians, and the rioters were the heroes from V?

I've learned the hard way the last few years the best way to beat crazy is with your own crazy.

Well, you're certainly giving crazy the old college try, but I'm not sure why you think it's working. Seems to me your only accomplishment with this tactic is to make yourself unhappy.