I will. In fact I’ve gone back in time and not voted for him in the Texas primary.
What I see is a guy that makes knowingly false allegations of violence by protestors, then turns around and tells his supporters to hit back. At that point, his supporters get violent.
“Trump’s record shows a couple of months of inciting violence against peaceful protestors.”
Yup. He hasn’t said, “Attack peaceful protestors.” That would be moronic and bad demagoguery. Rather he has pointed at peaceful protestors and told his supporters to clock them. Figuratively. I stand by my quoted claim.
Grow up. All of your allies are socialist by your definition. UK, France, Germany, Australia, NZ, Japan. The US is the one which is 40 years behind the times on this issue. The rest of the civilised world has decided that they can afford universal health care and to educate more people. Oh and your allies mostly have higher tax rates on wealthy people as well, so this is very much a modern and relevant concept.
About sums up the issue. When Baltimore needed room to destroy I didn’t read 1/10th this hand wringing.
Yes, he should. And chanters should be charged with trespassing, and anyone directing them to do it should be punished or at least denounced.
Think of how many missionaries the LDS church must have in the NYC metro area. What if they sent a few to each and every performance of “The Book of Mormon”, who would jump up and disrupt the show at key moments? Is that within their rights to protest?
I don’t care how much you dislike the particular performance in question, the principle is the same. And we don’t want to start down the slippery slope of trying to decide which performers are worthy of being allowed to complete their performances uninterrupted and which are not.
…and the chickens come home to roost.
You can complain about how Trump’s first amendment rights are being infringed by Bernie supporters, but Trump has been the one inciting and abetting violence all along.
This is the man you apologists want as your President? Good luck with that. I’ll just emigrate to Bora Bora if there’s enough of a majority of deluded and downright hateful people in the country to vote him President.
That’s alright, I have faith that there aren’t.
Did you read my post at all? Incitement to violence is a specific thing. Trump has directly called on his supporters to be violent to protesters as they are thrown out. That is illegal in the US. You can say anything you want as long as you don’t directly incite people to perform illegal acts, thats not legal, and last I heard assault is not legal in the US.
I did read your post. I wonder if you read mine, just a couple posts above yours, #245. In which I quoted you saying “Trump could and should be charged with ‘incitement to violence’.” The first words of my reply were “Yes, he should.” In case that wasn’t clear, I meant yes, he should be charged with “incitement to violence”. But I continued: “And chanters should be charged with trespassing, and anyone directing them to do it should be punished or at least denounced.”
Point being, as I keep saying, two wrongs don’t make a right. Not even if your “wrong” is a lesser wrong than the person you are directing it against. What Chris Brown did to Rhianna, for instance, is a despicable violent crime. But that doesn’t give me the right to go to his concerts and shout about what an awful person he is. If I do that, I will be kicked out and rightfully so, even though my “wrong” is far less egregious than his.
Cracks me up. Oh, Trump should be completely off the hook for inciting his supporters to rough up protesters, but it’s Sanders who’s the asshole for saying, “well, what the fuck did you think was going to happen?”
I know it’s repetitive for me to keep pointing out that “two wrongs don’t make a right”, but it occurs to me there’s a corollary some people aren’t getting: we expect “wrong” from the bad guy. We also expect, or should expect, “right” from the good guys. IOW I hold Bernie, or any Democrat, to a higher standard.
But Jack, you posted your post #249 right after mine, implying that you’re responding to me. If so, where do you get the idea that I think Drumpf “should be completely off the hook for inciting his supporters to rough up protesters”?!? 
In that very post, I wrote about Drumpf that “yes, he should be charged with ‘incitement to violence’”. Are you having trouble understanding that someone might believe both this *and *that what Bernie said was wrong?
What specific law does it violate?
I assume it does violate a law. At that point, if they’re willing to take the punishment for it, that’s civil disobedience, and I’m pretty cool with civil disobedience in general (civil disobedience for shitty causes is rendered shitty by the cause it serves: the end condemns the means).
See, here’s my problem.
On the one hand, I agree that working to silence someone’s message is a prima facie evil. You shouldn’t do it.
But there are several factors working against that.
Does anyone, including the protesters, believe that Trump’s message has any actual chance of getting silenced? His rally was canceled, sure. Is there one person in the world who doesn’t know Trump’s message who would have known it if the rally had proceeded? THe protesters I read who talked about their protest said they were trying to make sure the world saw people standing up to Trump. They said nothing about trying to silence him, which is perfectly reasonable, since that would have been a ludicrously poor attempt to silence him.
Second, an action of civil disobedience that is convenient to everyone involved is an ineffective action of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience, when effective, grinds the gears to a halt, right? It’s by nature disruptive, it stops the opposition from functioning, whether by decreasing salt production or by shutting down municipal buses. It SHOULD make things difficult for the opposition, or else what’s the point?
In Chicago, what was disrupted? A rally. The rally was unable to go ahead as originally planned. And yeah, that’s tricky, because rallies involve speech; but as I said before, I’m unconvinced it was intended to, or actually did, suppress Trump’s speech in any meaningful way.
And then there’s the issue that the protesters followed all the rules going up to the rally itself.
Finally, Trump is the one who cancelled the rally. He could have gone ahead with the rally, spoken to a crowd different from the one he’d expected to speak to; but rather than address this unfriendly crowd, he decided not to talk at all. I’m not sure I can lay the blame for that on the protesters.
The more I think about it, the harder I find it to condemn the protesters for their intended actions, or for the lion’s share of their actual actions.
Also, Slacker, on what basis should the chanters be charged with trespassing? My understanding is they got tickets legitimately.
Trump wanted to rent an arena to talk to a bunch of racist dumbshits who’d follow him into a neofascist state. No question about that. But logistics fell by the wayside, and he issued an open invitation to the arena to anyone who wanted to come.
Turns out a lot of protesters wanted to come, and they accepted his invitation.
I’m not clear at what point you think they trespassed.
This is all hypothetical, right? If a Trump performance had been interrupted?
Also traffic. That seems to be a recurring tactic over the past couple decades for Chicago protests.
They basically shut down the streets outside the UIC pavilion, shut down another intersection, and at once point got onto the freeway and attempted to block traffic there. So no, they didn’t just stop a rally.
A) Any event at UIC disrupts traffic. We’re used to it.
B) There are nearly infinite numbers of ways to get in and out of UIC. They (whether “they” are protesters or traffic cops) block one, you take another. We’re used to it.
C) Everyone had plenty of warning that there were going to be protests at UIC. We knew it for more than a week going in. This didn’t catch anyone by surprise. We’re used to it.
D) Traffic was actually lighter than normal. We’re not used to that.
It’s hard to think of a more time-honored form of civil disobedience than disrupting transportation networks–that’s what the Montgomery bus boycott was all about (and was also illegal). If people are willing to accept the legal penalties for their actions, then the form of protest is entirely legitimate.
IANAL, so I posted a question about this at GD; however, it hasn’t been answered yet. Nevertheless, I think I have a good handle on it and a quick look at an online legal dictionary supports my hunch:
Which makes sense, right? In the simplest case, think of a new neighbor you invite over for a barbecue. But then he gets drunk and starts ranting and raving about “the Mexicans” and how he can’t wait for Drumpf to “clean up the country”. He is now the proverbial turd in the punch bowl, so you ask him to leave. He can’t just stand his ground and say “you invited me, tough shit”.
There’s also the example I noted above of a Broadway play like “The Book of Mormon”. You bought a ticket, you have permission to be there…until you start talking loudly and refuse to be shushed by the usher. Then they call security and haul you out if you won’t go on your own.
Same applies here. The protesters are there as long as they stay in the good graces of Drumpf (or his agents). Even if they are silent, don’t block the view or anything, but reveal T-shirts with negative messages, they can be asked to leave and then become trespassers if they refuse.
Oh, but Drumpf is an awful racist, so who cares if his events get disrupted, right? Well, I consider Drumpf the very definition of “odious buffoon”, but I *really *like Sam Harris and Bill Maher, and a lot of people (including, famously, Ben Affleck) have called them racists. Is it okay to disrupt their events too? The campus PC crowd would no doubt say yes, but that’s a movement I abhor as much as Drumpf, maybe more in a way because I see it as a cancer on the Left.
As for civil disobedience, I wonder if we define that term the same way, you and I. I am all for it, if the law being disobeyed is unjust and should be changed. So of course the classic example is sit-ins to protest Jim Crow segregation laws in the South. But what is the unjust law here that should be changed? If you are saying the law against trespass as defined above is unjust, then I definitely disagree with you: I think such a law is essential, all the more so when it is to protect political speech in a presidential campaign. Nor do I believe that just because Drumpf has had ample opportunity to get his message out, he should not have the same protection as other candidates. The principle is the principle, and I absolutely do not want to head down that slippery slope or start expecting magistrates to decide how much political speech is “enough” before it is no longer protected.
Although the decision was about a somewhat different issue, I think the stirring and wise words of Robert Jackson in his majority decision in W. Virginia v. Barnette (1943) have some relevance here. Emphases mine:
So the fact that Drumpf is a despicable man who shows signs of aiming to remake the country in his fascist image does not mean we should declare his political speech out of bounds. Unless people have “the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order”, we have only “a mere shadow of freedom”. I believe that with all my heart.
It looks like the punishment for disruputing an event under secret service protection is up to a year in jail.
Text of the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011
Define “disrupt”. Precisely and legally, so that anyone would know just exactly what they can or cannot do.
Okay, sure. Activists who were told to leave, and given ample opportunity to comply, and did not do so–they should be charged with trespass. That makes sense.
That’s a strange definition. The Montgomery bus boycott violated laws against organizing boycotts, but what was actually being protested wasn’t the laws against organized boycotts: it was segregation on public transportation. It’s very common historically for civil disobedience to involve violating one law in order to prtoest a different injustice. The protesters who poured blood on the School of the Americas grounds weren’t protesting anti-vandalism laws, for instance. And the folks who got arrested for sitting at lunch counters were arrested for trespass but were not protesting trespass laws.
Are you sure you want to restrict your definition of civil disobedience so severely?
That’s not what I said. I’m saying that arguments about shutting down speech don’t necessarily apply in this situation. It’s pretty interesting, here: what he was denied was the audience he preferred. He still could have spoken, it’s just he would have spoken to a hostile audience. I’m not sure that comprises denial of his freedom of speech.