I asked three question and you answered one of them. So there’s obviously two unanswered questions. But that’s up to you; I can’t compel you to say what it is you believe.
It’s not a gotcha. I feel I’ve been pretty open on the points I disagree with you on. And I’ve expressed my opinions on the two causes I asked you about.
What I think about those two causes is a separate question than do i feel which peaceful protests are justified.
There is no place in civilized society for extrajudicial punishment or a barbaric justice system. The US is shameful with how we treat prisoners and in many cases the police use excessive force unjustifiably and with no consequences. Yeah I’m sympathetic to that aspect of BLM. There are many aspects that I’m not at all sympathetic to.
Concerning voter fraud or election shenanigans? I wouldn’t mind seeing national voter ID and more consistency state to state. I have no idea how prevalent shenanigans actually are because there is so much disinformation.
I am not joining any political protest or march because they have devolved into magnets for cranks, loons, and agitators.
Yes, I know. That’s why I posted it as three different questions.
I feel the main aspect of the BLM movement has been to hold police officers legally accountable for all of the people they kill and thereby put an end to the disproportionate killings of black people by the police. What are the other aspects you feel the BLM movement represents?
I see this as a separate issue from the protest movement. That was not about changing laws for future elections. It was about overturning the outcome of an election that had already occurred.
The only connection I can see between these two issues is if you feel that the protestors were justified in trying to overturn the election results because those results were the product of election fraud and you agree with the claim that Trump actually beat Biden. So the protestors were using illegal means in an attempt to achieve something they should have been able to obtain by legal means. Is this your position?
I’ll go on record saying I do not agree with that position. I feel the evidence is overwhelming that Biden legitimately won the election. Numerous lawsuits were filed against Biden’s victory, claiming election fraud, but none of them produced evidence to support their claim. If Biden had won due to election fraud, we would have seen the evidence of it by now.
On the broader issue, I also oppose most of the voter reform movement. While I support the idea of election reform when it’s needed, that doesn’t mean I automatically support everyone who says they are seeking election reform. Some people unfortunately lie. And I feel that is the case here.
Many of the people calling for election reform have failed to produce evidence that any significant amount of election fraud is occurring. The evidence instead says that these people who are saying they want to reform elections are actually seeking to corrupt them. They are trying to disenfranchise legitimate voters.
I feel there is often a connection between the worthiness of the cause and the make-up of the protests. Cranks, loons, and agitators are far more likely to be found in a crowd of people protesting against a bad cause than a good one.
Not to confuse the issue here, but I think you have to look at different treatment IN Washington DC between the summer and last week in particular to come to some kind of conclusion. Looking at rough treatment of BLM protesters in Dallas in July, and easy handling in DC on Wednesday isn’t a good comparison.
That said, it does look like there was a dramatically different response within DC in each case, and personally, I think a lot of that comes from DC being under what amounts to Federal control, versus being under State/County/City jurisdiction. Even if there’s not any explicit orders to treat one group differently than the others, the tone from the top is very clearly in favor of the white extremists vs. the BLM protesters.
I’m personally not convinced that there wasn’t something more shady going on during and before Wednesday’s riots. It’s astounding to me that there wasn’t a more robust presence at the Capitol with the counting of the ballots going on and a Trump rally just halfway down the National Mall. Not being prepared for what happened in that case is inexcusable. I mean it was the worst-case scenario, but there’s no reason they shouldn’t have been prepared and had a plan for it. There may not have been a need to fortify the Capitol, but having a more robust than usual presence AND a plan to get more police there in a hurry is a bare minimum I would expect out of the people in charge.
Source? I haven’t seen nor heard anything like academics, potiticians or media defending violence. Not in the past summer, not in recent history. Nor in Europe, nor in the US.
This is seriously beginning to sound like either willful ignorance or delusion.
“The pro-voter-suppression propaganda from my side has lied about electoral fraud to such an extent that it’s confused me about whether and how much electoral fraud actually exists, so I think we should probably have some voter-suppression practices to combat it.”
Chalk one up for propaganda disinformation, I guess!
Nothing wrong with having to use ID. I’m not sure why folks on the left are so opposed to a bit of election security.
Because people who don’t have IDs are disproportionately poor and black, and because there isn’t any evidence of actual fraud that would be mitigated by voter ID laws. Whatever you believe about voter ID laws, their impact is to disenfranchise poor and black people while not achieving anything productive.
It becomes even more obvious when states pick and choose what is and isn’t a valid form of ID. What possible explanation do you have for, say, Texas banning student ID but allowing a concealed carry permit, other than the fact that students are more likely to vote Democrat than concealed carry permit holders?
Why don’t you start a thread about that, since it would be a serious hijack here. Or, go review the Vote Suppressors thread in the Pit.
Because they know that control over which ID’s are accepted at registration and polling sites will be used as a means of turning away people who otherwise have a legitimate right to vote.
It has been proven over and over again that further/added security layers aren’t needed. There is virtually no illicit voting occurring. Tiny, tiny occurrences not worthy of new measures beyond whatever is required to register to vote.
Requiring a voter ID is the same as a poll tax. It costs money to get an ID you have to pay to get a state ID, even if it not a drivers license it is not free. That becomes a burden to a poor person, as it is a burden to need a car to get to where the ids are issued. Or to have the ‘right’ kind of mailing or residential address. You don’t get to keep placing barriers in front of people getting to vote.
Make the ids free then. Now it’s no longer a so-called poll tax or barrier to voting.
Of course it’s a barrier to voting. If you don’t have one, you don’t get to vote.
So if the government doesn’t want you to vote, they just don’t issue you the ID they say you need. Or they say the ID you have isn’t good enough. Try again next election.
Most people, if faced with a choice of:
vs.
would pick Side 1# without hesitation.
It is a barrier whether they charge or not. You either have to have a car to get to where they are providing ids or you have to have a transportation system that requires a fare to get there. Both of those are costs and so equal a poll tax. They have to have hours 7 days a week and at all hours to accommodate people’s work hours. They would have to provide respite childcare and home health care for those who are responsible for caring for children or the infirm. Handicap accessible transportation and staff assistants for disabled voters.
Sites to issue voter ID would have to be as available and convenient in blue-leaning, Democratic areas as in red, Republican areas, in minority areas as in white majority areas. Wait times in both kinds of areas must be the same to be fair and not a barrier. Many states failed in these regards for polling sites recently.
It is a poll tax whenever there is a barrier or an impediment to voting. No-cost IDs would be only the tip of the iceberg.
Yes, it’s still a barrier to voting because it’s one more hoop a voter has to jump through to exercise their birthright as a citizen of a democracy.
Which I would be perfectly willing to accept if there were any plausible indication that such additional measures really are needed to prevent electoral fraud.
But so far, the Republicans have produced jack-shit in the way of evidentiary support for their scaremongering claims about people voting fraudulently. Which puts them in the ludicrous position of wanting to spend money on a major program of ID card issuance and scrutiny with no evidence that such a program is in fact necessary.
Hey everybody, remember back when the Republicans were supposedly opposed to wasteful unnecessary government spending? Yeah, makes me laugh too, especially in these days of the Big Beautiful Border Wall and milking taxpayers for the Presidents’ unprecedently numerous and lavish golfing holidays and visits to Trump properties.
Or violent and evil like many of the protesters of this summer.
It’s awfully fascinating how people can be ok with mob violence when it’s not their skull getting cracked, their business being torched, etc. You present a false choice. We could have a society where all political violence is condemned and prosecuted.
Anyone with half a brain would demand your definitions of the terms “Righteous cause” and “Evil cause” before participating in such a poll.
Well, there aren’t significant numbers of liberals who are “ok with mob violence”. We’re certainly not the ones voting for politicians who keep repeating flagrant lies and encouraging insurrection to stir crowds up to mob violence.
I agree that the complacency and excuse-making by many conservatives who don’t seem to care much that many of their political leaders and fellow conservatives have been attempting to overthrow our legitimately constituted government by violence does kind of bear out your observation, although doubtless not in the way you wanted it interpreted.
Repeating this isn’t making it true.
It was not many of the protestors; it was a few protestors. The estimates I’ve seen say that over ninety percent of the BLM protestors were peaceful, non-violent, and committed no crimes. You shouldn’t dismiss the more then ninety percent of the peaceful protestors for the less than ten percent who were violent rioters. Unless, of course, you are looking for a reason to dismiss the cause.
Meanwhile the Washington protestors were wrong all the way down to the core. They were wrong because they were participating in a violent riot. And even those who were there for a peaceful protest and didn’t participate in the riot were there to support a really horrible cause; they were trying to overthrow democracy. They were bad people doing bad things for a bad reason.