For how many years have Republicans gone on about the constitution and the first amendment, and cried censorship at the slightest criticism of their utterances? And now Trump is explicitly having people arrested and deported for vocing opinions, and Republicans range from silent to enthusiastic. They never believed in the constitution or in free speech. They just didn’t like it when people disagreed with them.
They never believed in the constitution or in free speech. They just didn’t like it when people disagreed with them.
The evidence has always been in their actions. Hate speech hampers freedom of speech, and they wanted to protect hate speech. This puts them in direct conflict with a genuinely free society.
Preserving the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest amount of people usually means giving up some smaller specific freedoms, like, you know, the freedom to threaten the lives of minorities.
Personally, I think they should be allowed to threaten - and for those minorities and good folk to openly promise bloody murder if the racists tried their luck.
The right-wing traditionally has a monopoly on violence, not just physical, but also in speech. When you are free of consequence, your reach will grasp ever further. Like what Trump is doing with his EOs.
I love the energy, but the reality is that minorities do not have the power of the oppressors. Allowing that kind of back and fourth will be met with larger consequences for one group than the other. But again, conceptually, I’m with you.
IMO, the thing of most value for my position is that it normalizes opposition and resistance. After MLK died, the media was used to enshrine his approach in the history books…and Malcom X was a footnote at best for most students. It is through offering the promise of violent revolution if peaceful evolution wasn’t negotiated, is how we got here without too many corpses.
By removing the notion of violence from protest, things were lost:
1: Fewer people to protest anything. The elimination of ‘rough’ characters simply meant fewer people to raise signs, fists, or to speak.
2: It has become taboo to associate with people who believe in giving as good as they get, or being aggressive. This means that kind protestors simply don’t communicate with the violent ones, so there is less coordination for their goals.
3: A wider array of actions to do for protest. For example, ignoring ‘safe space’ rules, such as the perimeter around JD Vance’s house, or burning Teslas in America, or displaying the (wax) severed heads of Trump and friends. These aren’t kind things, but they certainly give a message to the people in charge.
If roughness in politics among everyday people was ordinary, we might have more work strikes - or the people in the US Treasury could have denied DOGE unlawful entry, because the spirit of opposition was ingrained into people in that other timeline.
For how many years have Republicans gone on about the constitution and the first amendment, and cried censorship at the slightest criticism of their utterances? And now Trump is explicitly having people arrested and deported for vocing opinions, and Republicans range from silent to enthusiastic. They never believed in the constitution or in free speech. They just didn’t like it when people disagreed with them.
The evidence has always been in their actions. Hate speech hampers freedom of speech, and they wanted to protect hate speech. This puts them in direct conflict with a genuinely free society.
Preserving the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest amount of people usually means giving up some smaller specific freedoms, like, you know, the freedom to threaten the lives of minorities.
Personally, I think they should be allowed to threaten - and for those minorities and good folk to openly promise bloody murder if the racists tried their luck.
The right-wing traditionally has a monopoly on violence, not just physical, but also in speech. When you are free of consequence, your reach will grasp ever further. Like what Trump is doing with his EOs.
I love the energy, but the reality is that minorities do not have the power of the oppressors. Allowing that kind of back and fourth will be met with larger consequences for one group than the other. But again, conceptually, I’m with you.
IMO, the thing of most value for my position is that it normalizes opposition and resistance. After MLK died, the media was used to enshrine his approach in the history books…and Malcom X was a footnote at best for most students. It is through offering the promise of violent revolution if peaceful evolution wasn’t negotiated, is how we got here without too many corpses.
By removing the notion of violence from protest, things were lost:
1: Fewer people to protest anything. The elimination of ‘rough’ characters simply meant fewer people to raise signs, fists, or to speak.
2: It has become taboo to associate with people who believe in giving as good as they get, or being aggressive. This means that kind protestors simply don’t communicate with the violent ones, so there is less coordination for their goals.
3: A wider array of actions to do for protest. For example, ignoring ‘safe space’ rules, such as the perimeter around JD Vance’s house, or burning Teslas in America, or displaying the (wax) severed heads of Trump and friends. These aren’t kind things, but they certainly give a message to the people in charge.
If roughness in politics among everyday people was ordinary, we might have more work strikes - or the people in the US Treasury could have denied DOGE unlawful entry, because the spirit of opposition was ingrained into people in that other timeline.
At this point, the attempts to explain to the uneducated are futile, there is no going back.
Americans, sadly even the good ones, will now reap what the R’s have sown.
There is nothing left to defend if nobody is willing to defend it.
Maybe this time explaining this in reaction to them behaving this way for the millionth time in the last 50 years will get em.
No? Maybe we should take action instead. This is no surprise. We know what they are.