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The Use Of [Violence] By The State
Zavian
universal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered User regular
universal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered User regular
I was shocked over the discourse the past day by how many agree with the use of lethal force by US law enforcement, to the point that I requested a voluntary ban, which was denied. In light of that I thought it would be worthwhile to create a thread specifically dealing with the use of violence and extrajudicial murder by the state, and why there should ALWAYS be push back against it. I think there really is a 'cycle of violence' that can escalate situations out of control, and the only way to stop this is through DISARMAMENT. That means disarming the public AND the police (I'm talking specifically about the US).
A great fear of mine is that this current situation with the Capitol siege will lend itself not towards a positive progressive future, but one towards increased militarization of the police, increased budgets towards that goal, and inevitably an increased use of said militarized force on the general public. We need to be working towards DIARMING the police, as well as repealing the 2nd Amendment. Instead, over the past few days, gun sales have SOARED, violent extremist rhetoric has increased, and an overall bloodthirst has taken hold of people. I'm VERY concerned about this as IMO it's stepping towards the direction of violence and chaos instead of towards non-violence and civil policing. I don't believe ANYONE 'deserves' to be murdered by the police. The progressive goal should ALWAYS be towards disarmament and civil peace, not just on a local scale, but also on a global scale, including nuclear disarmament. It's very distressing to see people instead reach towards the very opposite end of that spectrum.
I don't know if I will continue to post on these boards, but I wanted to post my thoughts and beliefs on this issue as I think it's a very important topic to discuss.
A great fear of mine is that this current situation with the Capitol siege will lend itself not towards a positive progressive future, but one towards increased militarization of the police, increased budgets towards that goal, and inevitably an increased use of said militarized force on the general public. We need to be working towards DIARMING the police, as well as repealing the 2nd Amendment. Instead, over the past few days, gun sales have SOARED, violent extremist rhetoric has increased, and an overall bloodthirst has taken hold of people. I'm VERY concerned about this as IMO it's stepping towards the direction of violence and chaos instead of towards non-violence and civil policing. I don't believe ANYONE 'deserves' to be murdered by the police. The progressive goal should ALWAYS be towards disarmament and civil peace, not just on a local scale, but also on a global scale, including nuclear disarmament. It's very distressing to see people instead reach towards the very opposite end of that spectrum.
I don't know if I will continue to post on these boards, but I wanted to post my thoughts and beliefs on this issue as I think it's a very important topic to discuss.
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Also the traitor Ashli Babbitt flew 4000 miles across the country to engage in insurrection. She wasn't a civilian, she wasn't a victim, she was someone literally engaging in war against this country and democracy itself. Ideally she would have been arrested and jailed for a long time, but she made the choices she did.
I also believe in the right to proportional self defense, including the necessary defense of others. If lethal force is necessary to protect the innocent, it is justified.
The government should have a monopoly on violence and the government should be able to operate without fear of violence. If a mob is threatening the lives of innocent people who are trying to do their jobs of governing the nation and violence / lethal force are the only way to allow that, I consider that sad and unfortunate but being already at a failure state justified.
People should lose their jobs for the negligence that made violence necessary on Wednesday. On both sides. The cop that killed the woman did the right thing and she is entirely at fault - I consider that basically suicide by cop.
He was the last line of defense before the VIP area where a significant part of the USAs leadership was being protected from a mob counting hundreds, which are known to have had: Firearms, at least 2 makeshift bombs, a spear, a dozen molotov cocktails. They also killed an officer, presumably by hitting him in the head with a fire extinguisher.
Do I wish people to die? No.
Is this the exact scenario where violence is allowed to hold a defensive line? Yes.
If you are not allowed to shoot to protect the elected leadership from lynching, kidnapping, execution, then at what point can any security force shoot?
Yeah. I'm of the opinion that the folks who refused to take this seriously/wanted it to happen are the reason that people died. It shouldn't have come to this.
I know there are some people who are 100% for abolish the police completely and forever, but I don't think that's going to happen. Even if we get to a utopian future where guns are abolished and police don't carry them either, I think there will still be violence of some kind, and in order to prevent it we will need people authorized to use force to stop them.
Now, I would love to be proven wrong! Maybe one day we will get there. But that day is not today. But I also want to state that I don't think that wanting long term disarmament and supporting lethal force against violent offenders are contrary positions. Disarmament is a long term goal, which will take long term action. But violence is here today, and we need short term solutions to that as well.
To be blunt, you nip it in the bud or you watch it grow. When people get used to the idea of talking about violence they start dropping the caveats after a few years of repetition.
99% of the work on making general disarmment be a thing that happens has to come in preventing violence in the first place. once you're dealing with a lynch mobs it's a little late.
The way the US uses lethal force, in the vast majority (think 99.9.......% with a ton of trailing zeroes) of times, is obviously wrong and needs to change.
But there will always be certain situations where it's necessary.
For a very long time now, but especially in recent history and last year in particular, we’ve been forced to endure people of color killed by vigilante or state sanctioned violence for petty or no reason at all. From Trevon Martin to Breonna Taylor to George Floyd to so many more that I cannot possibly name them all. These people had their names dragged through the mud, every minor flaw publicly amplified to justify their murder in order to continue the practice of murdering more people of color. The people that justifiably protested such ruthless behavior were then arrested, beaten, and murdered by the state. Often egregiously so.
So when a literal insurrectionist is killed trying to overthrow the government and, at the least, be an accomplice to attempted murder of elected officials, it is very hard to express any sympathy for her. This woman wasn’t buying Skittles or used a fake $20 or sitting in her own goddamn home, she took part in an attempted violent overthrow of the United States.
Sanctity of life is important, but it’s a two-way street. The people behind that door had every right to life as she did and are allowed to protect themselves. The same goes for who shot her, that person has a right to defend themselves along with a duty to protect their charges, up to including deadly force. She wasn’t standing in the streets, but attempting to break into a barricaded door and warned several times.
The disparity between how BLM protesters and this traitorous group of insurrectionists is staggering. So please excuse my lack of empathy for this traitor while I play the world’s smallest violin over her death, as she brought it upon herself. I just do not have the emotional reserves to feign outrage when an orange asshole is trying to overthrow the government, and a person gets herself killed trying to accomplish that goal.
I, and I think everyone else on this board, are quite capable of distinguishing the nuance of the situation here.
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Because they gave every indication they were going to not check back and a notification might actually prompt them to check back.
I don't think you'll find a lot of people who blanket support use of force by police. Often they are entirely unjustified and bring to bare force that is entirely unequal to the conflict they're "resolving". That said, shooting someone who is breaking into congress to try to stop the due process of the legislative branch, following repeated warnings to cease after an illegal entering of the premises, is maybe not one of those cases. Like, first do no harm, but zeroth don't let anyone else do greater harm.
solving this problem will have nothing to do with whether or not police have too many guns and everything to do with who those police pay fealty, which reaches up to the real issue, which is that we need to remove abusive structures that seek to undermine peoples' ability to make reasonable determinations about what is real and what is not. that woman climbed through a window after being told over and over she'd be shot because she had been led to believe the consequences could not reach her.
tl;dr: cops with guns feel too powerful and we should have fewer; we still need them to protect our places of governance; the real problem is not that police have guns (although it is a problem), the problem is that a huge portion of our society (which includes many if not most police) are conspiracy theorists who think their fellow Americans are the cause of all evil in the world.
If you're unhappy that people here aren't mourning her death in sufficient numbers, I suppose I'm not sure how you function in every day life? Every single day people die violently. Wailing with grief for every one is impossible. Rending my clothes for someone who was killed while participating in an attempt to install a totalitarian regime in America is an unreasonable expectation. Do you mourn each and every person who is murdered? How do you live your life? We are surrounded by a deluge of tragedy, every single day. It is survival to value judge which ones we are affected by.
Maybe the disagreeable kernel in that is that Capitol police's duty to secure the Capitol and Congress is higher than their duty to not shoot people breaking in?
Zero tears for dead fascists.
Do I care that she was shot because she was doing the dumbest fucking thing imaginable? Nope. Absolutely zero sympathy or empathy for her. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Fund health care, education and social services. These are long term structural and cultural changes that unfortunately seem to take a very long time to enact. But there are people out there who just want to kill people they don't like, and officials need to be defended from them.
I am also in favor of the state using its monopoly on violence to deter fascists who attempt to murder their way into power because you can't maintain a democratic state if you allow fascists to murder all of the government officials and install a dictator.
You don't have to cry for them that they died on the way, but I think we should try to have empathy for the fact that she (like so many others) was caught up in a really dangerous loop that abused everything they know about human behavior to warp her into someone who would do something so stupid to endanger herself and others, ostensibly because she felt she was doing something beneficial for her community.
It's really fucking sad that she's dead, and the fault isn't with the guy who pulled the trigger on someone who should have never been there to be in his line of fire in the fist place, but it's not all on her, either. Conservative media knows how to pull people's strings and manipulate people into people they could have never seen themselves being before getting hooked. It's invasive, abusive, and evil, and it's the place we need to focus our attention if we want to enact change.
It's an ugly fucking future ahead of us, but we need to acknowledge that racists and fascists, the leadership, knows what they're doing to their rank-and-file, who get pulled into ugly circumstances that they cannot escape the same way people who get sucked into cults do. They're encouraged (first by authority, then by friends and family) to ignore reality, to cut out sources of information that would ground them, to abandon people who would show them alternative ideas, and so on.
It's really really difficult to deprogram people who have been taken in by a cult structures and overall it's going to be one of those jobs that none of us should have to do but all of us will have to do to get it done. We have to start by acknowledging that these people are being manipulated and abused into these deranged mindsets, and those abusive structures exist on so many levels (conservative families; conservative churches; conservative workplaces; conservative television; conservative social media; etc, etc, etc. any group that tells people directly that they should disregard other sources of information qualifies.)
And it's so fucking ugly because they hate everyone else and they want to burn everything to do the ground and the only solution is to be accepting and show them they're wrong even though they do not want to hear a word we have to say. Because the alternative is to kill them or to let their hate fester until Civil War Round 3.
The world is complicated, and people are complicated, and pithy one-liners are how we get people into the condition we're dealing with today.
Maybe to some people that's semantics, and that's fine. It isn't an issue there is a demonstrable right and wrong on, and it is, and should, be debatable.
My stance on, for example, the use of force by capitol police Wednesday, was that it was entirely justified. That doesn't mean I think killing someone is right, or ok. If someone can offer up an alternative to a country defending itself from aggression and violence, from within or without, I'd be more than open to hearing it.
And I'm not talking about an imaginary scenario where no mistakes were made that ever lead to the situation in the first place. There is no lack of things that never should have happened, lines that never should have been crossed, that lead to that point; but the point is actual reality, not theoretical idealism. Yeah, Trump should have never been elected. Yeah, he should have been removed from office dozens of times. Yeah, the South shouldn't have been vacated so quickly from oversight of the North, that lead to the proliferation of institutional supremacy, of the murder and oppression of freed people who never had enough time to establish themselves before they had the knee put back on their necks. And on and on and on. The officers shouldn't have let the rioters through the gates, the government should have had a lot more manpower and resources to keep the situation under control, again, and on and on and on.
I'm talking about in the exact situation that occurred, what were the alternatives?
For me, it comes down to basic political theory. And I don't mean party politics, I mean political science theory. A government has to show it is able and willing to defend itself. Throughout human history, like it or not, that defense has been manifest in violence. It doesn't mean there are no other options, but it means there is a reason it is that way. Wanting to change things, and accepting the way they are, aren't mutually exclusive. I personally don't think anyone should have to die by violence, either by the state, or by individuals. I think more should be done to ensure violence is always the actual last resort, including, but not limited to, providing every necessary need to everyone, including food, shelter, health care, education, income, etc, to remove the basic instinctual, primal, fears, anxieties, and concerns that are tools that are frequently used to incite and perpetuate violence. But absent that, the current world we live in still has violence, and while there are some non-lethal means of defense, they aren't typically broad enough to be employed a situation such as what took place at the Capitol Building, without substantially more preparation, planning, and resources. Again, there's a long discussion about the failures that lead to it, and what can be done to prevent it, and much to be learned. But those things didn't take place, and we did, in reality, have a violent coup where the people who were left to defend against it, weren't left with any other realistic options to defend themselves, the building, and the elected officials inside who were sheltering.
For a country to have done nothing, to just allowed the mob to take over completely, reach further, kidnap, injure, or murder staff and officials, is unacceptable. It ceases to be a country at that point, because it is immediately illegitimate. The country might have upheld an absolute non-violent ideology, but given that it is at that point done, that ideology wasn't particularly helpful.
Many leaders, not only in American history, but world history, have commented on how violence, war, defense, etc, becomes far less simple than it seems from the ground, when you are the one either making, or participating in making the choices. All the anti-war, anti-violence ideology and rhetoric is great in theory, until you're faced with groups or individuals who don't share them, who would happily take your life to enrich theirs. Choices and actions have to be made in order to respond. Doing nothing is a choice. Choosing to remain non-violent is a choice. Maybe your enemy sees that and has a come-to-jesus moment and decides to extend their hand in peace. More likely, based on the entirety of human history, they will instead just steamroll you, take everything you have, and establish their own government in your place.
I don't have a gun, and I will never have one. I have two marksman ribbons from the military, I know how to use a gun, I was trained, I used one nearly every single day when I was on the honor guard, either performing services, or being a guard for the weapons we were transporting. But I will never have one as a private citizen, and there will never be one in my home as long as I have any say in the matter. It is my choice. I think the 2nd amendment is misunderstood, but even as written is completely inapplicable to the modern day. I understand there's plenty of people who disagree, and people who think that is weak or silly. That's fine. I will still defend myself in what ways I can, should I have to, but I just think the temptation of having a gun is unacceptable, and statistically is more likely to cause harm to me, or my family, than whatever imagined defense it could provide. I'm not a hunter, I'm not even a meat eater, so I don't need one for that reason either. I don't necessarily fault anyone who is armed, or has justified it for themselves; however I do get concerned at the danger they're causing to themselves, and potentially others, and it isn't something I'm super cool with, but at the same time I'm not going to go and scream in peoples faces about it. Were I in power I'd absolutely vote for legislation to drastically limit gun access and rights, and put substantial rules in place to remove unnecessary firearms from circulation, while still providing access for those that it is necessary for.
I don't think it is ethically ok to purposefully kill or injure someone. However, I think it is justifiable to defend yourself, or those you are tasked with defending. That might appear paradoxical to some, but from my perspective it isn't really. Sometimes what is necessary isn't ok. And, to me, remembering that it isn't ever ethical to commit violence, ensures I never forget that defense, no matter how justified, has a profound weight, and that it never becomes a first resort. I think the officers defending the Capitol Wednesday did something ethically wrong in killing the woman that was shot, but I think that the fact that they had to defend themselves and it unfortunately lead to that death, was fully justified. I think there should be consequences for any law enforcement who commits violence, even if it is fully justified. I don't think it should ever have become an assumed part of the job, and I don't think that "qualified immunity" is acceptable in a modern society. I think if you get into that career you have to accept that every single thing you do should be to actively avoid violence in every possible form, but sometimes it is necessary, and there will be consequences to remind you that it must be the last resort.
I hope that makes any amount of sense, and doesn't just come across as equivocation or mental gymnastics. It's something I've given a lot of thought and I think it makes sense, both for an understanding of where we are, and ideally as a basis to move forward in a way that moves us out of base violence and animal instinct, without trying to pretend that the world is something that it isn't. Idealism is fine, so long as it remains within possibility. The goal, as I see it, is to create a world where what becomes possible is a lot better than what we can imagine to be possible now. I want future generations to be able to have idealism that has much further bounds than we are limited to by the world we live in. It's just that I think the world we live in does have restrictions that need to be considered in imagining what we can do now.
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This woman, and the individuals behind her, were wholly and completely emboldened by the police all but encouraging them (and maybe even actively encouraging them) to enter the Capitol with violence in mind. There was no need for lethal violence if the Capitol police had done their actual fucking jobs in the first place.
Once the woman and the crowd with her entered the Capitol as a hostile group, their lives were forfeit. The only thing that amazes me here is how reluctant the internal security forces were to fire on the intruders; if this had been anything but effectively a Nazi crowd, the body crowd would've been far higher.
this would be an entire separate thread, but i'm not sure the issue is settled on this or any other emotion being a choice
Acting on your hate by trying to kill them is a choice.
i don't mean to be that guy but
The problem is that once you start framing these things as not being their choice, you are essentially unravelling the entire basis of our view on individual responsibility that suffuses our culture, ethnical and legal frameworks.
If you can't be responsible for your own actions because you watched Fox News, how are you responsible for anything?
I do think it is very true that we vastly overestimate people's ability to "listen and decide" based on being exposed to things though. But I think the obvious answer to this ends up being information control.
Well, I'm not a conservative, so the fact that this is how the world I was born into works isn't a good enough reason for me to not want to change it. As science increasingly brings the function of free will into question, we should be equally finding ways to account for it. The reality is that people are shaped by the world around them and as long as we maintain that every person is fully in charge of their every action, we're never going to resolve the problems that need resolution.
Social structures impose themselves on individuals in ways that have consistent, predictable outcomes. We can hold both parties responsible for the outcomes that they reach together. Shrugging and saying, "Well, it's her fault that the media she's exposed to every day for 30 years warped her worldview, so we can punish her and be done," does not solve the problem, unless the problem is that you feel a need for vengeance. There's going to be another one as long as the system that is generating them continues to operate.
Conversely force by the state is justified to discourage the sword falling too fast and without thought.
She did not go into the Capitol and attack because she was poor or abused or society treated her badly. Very few of those assholes did. This framing is a bit of an insult to all the *actually* abused people in the country that don't froth into a murderous rage.
The problem is if your framework here is she has no responsibility for her own actions. Blaming Fox New is just another pithy one-liner. "The media she chose to expose herself to shaped her actions and that's why she got shot" does solve the problem in that her getting shot stopped her from doing the thing she wasn't supposed to be doing. Not really much to do with vengeance there.
Honestly your post overall just seems like kind of a strange response to pointing out the degree to which choice underlies basically all the ways in which we view the world.
So rightly or wrongly, we say, after this time, your choices are your fault, even if there are a thousand asterisks and footnotes involved. The consequences of not doing so are just too dire for society, but we should still be striving to reduce that as society gets more able to support the causes of choices. I'd much rather sociopaths get empathy meds or something than to just wait for them to force us to punish them, etc.
Taking a life is, ultimately, managing the resources of a population. We can't afford for certain things to happen, so we sacrifice the lower cost, leading is basically to the trolley problem.
However, I feel that it should always hurt a little, or else it risks becoming an easy choice to make, and we stop looking for better solutions. It doesn't have to cause you agony or something, but there needs to be enough there to ensure that you will always at least desire a better solution even if there is none, so that when one is available you will jump on it.
the whole issue is muddy as fuck, and there will always be examples of police violence that are extremely hard to deny as unavoidable in that specific context, but isn't the broader and more useful question how we better minimize those situations?
if there had been the type of preventative policing displayed for the Trump Insurrection, as there were for the BLM protests would things have escalated to the point that people needed to be shot by police?
police violence is always, in every case, a failed scenario. that doesn't mean there is no situation where it's the only choice left. it means something should have been done to prevent it getting to that point. it likely is not possible to prevent every situation, but we damned sure could do better than we do.
You need to use whatever means possible to prevent fascists from murdering your government and installing a dictator.