Isn’t suicide a sin or something?
“As of right now…”
If you have stock in Sec Esper, you may want to think about selling.
You may have heard about the unidentified military cosplay guys guarding the White House perimeter yesterday. They only identified themselves as “Department of Justice”. Some people are now saying they are DOJ prison riot teams based on tattoos and insignia. (The most common earlier tinfoil speculation was Erik Prince mercs).
Ku Klux Karen here trying to get the cops to move the peaceful protesters in Merrick, Long Island. They yell at them to “Go West”. #NIMBY Long Island, home to white flight.
I’m a few hours behind on the thread so apologies if the subject has moved on but it’s worth noting that we all make these quarantine judgement calls in our daily lives. When my daughter says “I want to break quarantine because I want Hot Cheetos,” that’s a hard no but when she wants to break quarantine to visit her estranged biological father who is dying in the hospital, despite the higher risk a hospital poses, those are stakes that justify the risk.
On a national level, there are few things that would justify a mass breaking isn’t distancing norms. This is one of them. This is not the moment anyone would have chosen for this issue to finally get the attention it deserves but the problem with continually pouring gasoline on a smoldering Fire is that it tends to blow up at the most inconvenient time. Fighting for fundamental civil and human rights, which have been systematically denied to millions of citizens is about as high as the stakes get. Wars have been fought to defend these principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and this long overdue mass movement is about as fundamental and important issue as any we’ve faced in this country’s history.
By analogy, suppose you’re walking along the street and you see a nursing home on fire. You decide to rush into the building to help old people safely out. You’re taking two risks here, one that you might be burned to death in the fire, the other that you might be infected by / infect another person. The former is by far the more proximate danger, and if you’re willing to face it in order to help people out of the building, of course you’re willing to face the less proximate danger as well, and that willingness says nothing at all about whether you believe Covid-19 is dangerous or not.
These people, rightly or wrongly, believe they are in the street to save the lives of themselves or their neighbors. In pursuit of that goal, they’re willing to face the quite proximate danger of death at the hands of law enforcement. Of course they’re willing to face the less proximate chance they’ll get sick. It could be that they’re judging those risks incorrectly, but that doesn’t mean they don’t believe the risks exist, or that they have not factored them into their calculus.
Lol, those people aren’t stereotypical Lawng Island douchebags at all.
rowe33
3609
So let’s see…on the athlete scoreboard for today we have:
BLM Supporters:
Braden Holtby - goalie for the Washington Capitals
Privileged White Assholes:
Drew Brees - QB for the New Orleans Saints
I think this is significant. It’s important to remember that it’s not like these protests are happening in spite of covid-19. There’s a whole system of interdependency. The fact that a lot of people are probably unemployed right now means that they have the time to protest when they otherwise might not have. This isn’t to say that the protests aren’t important to them, but if you’re usually living paycheck-to-paycheck, you’re going to work instead of protesting because if you don’t work, you don’t eat. Removing that as even a possibility means that other things come back onto the table.
Similarly, the increased visibility of the marginalization of communities of color w/r/t unemployment and health care that resulted from the virus are likely to increase the motivation of some protesters.
Timex
3613
The same argument was made against the quarantine by other folks.
In many cases, their justifications of taking the risks were perhaps trivial by comparison, but it was the same idea… that they knew the risks, and were willing to take them.
Even aside from the actual protests, now we’re seeing folks get arrested. That arrest process is going to expose folks to covid, and then send them back out into the community.
ShivaX
3614
Isn’t that what the CBP is anyway?
Trump will get the blame for that.
None
3618
Wow, thanks for that. I saw that they are gonna pull down the Confederate obelisk, across from the Arch, on Broad.
Been watching Devin Stone’s youtube channel Legal Eagle for a year or so. It’s very informative and offers great information, usually in a very clear-headed and non-judgmental way.
I’ve never seen him do anything like this. Watch it. Share it.
Fascinating, thanks.
It is interesting, to say the least, to see what comes out of the woodwork in times like these. “Boogaloo Brigade?” Really?
I agree, at some point you have to look at the numbers. Cops kill dozens of African-American a year in bad shooting. In most place in the country a crowd of 10,000 is going to have couple of Covid-19 infected, it is pretty much an absolutely certain for 100,000. Masks help, being outdoors helps, but the hugs, the removing of the mask to shout, and mostly being surrounded by people for hours, this is a recipe for transmission. The protester are generally young, but can easily spread it to their parents, and grandparents. If the protester were simply risking their on lives, that would be one thing, but they aren’t they are putting everyone at risk of dying.
This is virus appears to be twice as deadly for African-American as the population as whole. If we really want to save black lives, getting control of this virus is the single most important thing that any of us can do.
