Stats. Facts. Stop gish galloping and ad homenen-ing.

You can pick another of the arguments I made if you'd preferable.

My thesis is "the general population is too scared for effective resistance" nothing I have said is contradictory to that.

You keep moving the goalpost and going on tangents. Would you like to directly answer any the claims I've posted?

Find any stats on police killings that support your views?

Okay, I wanted to drop this because bucket seemed to be spinning out pretty hard after getting his world view repeatedly fact checked and proven repeatedly wrong, but I'm a big fan of treating others the way they want to treat others and this sort of conspiracy theory nonsense is 100% some "bullshit that needs to be thrown back in their faces"

So are you going to engage at all with the material of the conversation or are you just going to spread conspiracy theories because the worldview being expressed isn't your own?

Lol, I definitely didn't interpret you coming in hot at all. I made the mistake of engaging in on a few other 'hot button' threads the last couple of days and you have been, by far, the most pleasant, insightful and willing to engage in good faith. It's very much appreciated <3.

Action for action's sake just makes everyone tired and unable to act when it's necessary. I'm not advocating "doing nothing" I'm advocating for intentionality, thoughtfulness, a hefty dose of cynicism and acting out of evidence instead of idealism.

I'm not saying don't vote, I'm saying be realistic about what it can and cannot accomplish. The reason I often end up in these sorts of conversations is due to the common trend of people refusing to engage or help those directly in front of them because of some variation of 'they voted for things to be different' and so feel entitled to not get their hands dirty as well as a smug "not my problem, I did my part" or "that problem has already been solved, it's just not fully implemented". In either case it often leads to them being an active barrier to helping others and intentionally choosing to harm others. Which makes even doing small things like providing food, first aid, escape etc. sooooo much harder than it needs to be.

The problem though is it doesn't matter how many individual fires you put out, it doesn't scale up and doesn't affect the root cause of any of them and that's what I was replying "I don't have a good answer to" to. Especially since each individual problem is probably going to end up needing a different approach.

So until we can figure out how to turn off the 'light everything on fire machine' it seems like we're pretty aligned on putting out fires where we can, when we can. Keep fighting the good fight, and good luck!

The messaging I'm seeing (and assuming that it is what you're referencing) doesn't seem to be arguing against "resistance" it's arguing against "performative resistance". If you don't understand the difference between the two I can definitely see why that would come across as demotivating.

Personally that same messaging you are finding demotivating gives me lots of hope in the future as there seems to be an upswelling of desire to actually fix things and coming to terms with the scope and reality of the situation.

It's bad. The work to fix the last 50+ years of buried/ignored problems is a monumental amount of work, but facing it head on means that we can start making progress instead of just leaving it to pile up further and to get worse.

Hoping this "bot-farm"s perspective helps a bit with the whole "hopeless and helpless" feeling.

What is the argument you are trying to make with repeating that?

Is your argument that was a massive blow to the material holdings of US law enforcement? There are 17,985 police agencies in the US, we'll pretend they only have one station per agency (that's a gross underestimate, the Minneapolis 3rd precinct should make that clear...) then 0.000056% of police precincts were burnt down during the protests. I would argue a number that small is negligible.

Is your argument that a burnt down precinct is a form of justice that was achieved? There were ~1200 police killings in 2020. If that is your argument, then only 0.083% of people murdered that year got justice, much less any from previous/subsequent years.

I actually don't think that's accurate.

Here's another source you're turn, shop around a bit see if you can find anyone who publishes a number that agrees with you. Nobody agrees with your speculation.

We need to talk about unjustified killings.

This is a uniquely American problem. Either 'Americans are just soooo unbelievably violent and deadly that they must be put down like the rabid dogs they are' or something else is going on. Please stop insinuating people like George Floyd are rabid dogs that need to be put down.

You could literally do whatever you wanted.

It's a nice idea, but not how any of that works because we don't live in anything like a true confederation.

no-trial no-warrant neo-Gestapo

98% of criminal cases in the US already don't get a trial. If we're going to talk about the George Floyd protests we should talk about Breanna Taylor and the fraudulent warrant that led to her death.

ICE is something different.

And worse. I agree, but it's a continuation of, and supported by, the same police you are claiming are "fixed". ICE cannot operate effectively without direct LEO support.

I'm saying that is an important factor, yes.

Your turn! Point out where what I said is bullshit.

I'm not

"insisting that nothing anyone can do could possibly help and the no one has ever done anything meaningful to resist"

I'm saying that we have the benefit of hindsight now and can look back and see the results of actions taken and determine what tactics were and weren't effective. If you don't do that and instead only focus on how much "hard work" was put in instead of the results of the labor you're going to be constantly wearing yourself out and accomplishing nothing.

I'm begging you to focus less on the "how many people showed up" and focus more on the "what did it accomplish" and update your tactics accordingly.

(pretty rarely) they actually rioted

That's fair, and you're right that in my frustration I'm not giving proper credit where credit is due. It was definitely the last time I had hope of things improving somewhat and the bad takes/wrong lessons learned sometimes make me forget that.

they changed the language of policing and basically made it clear that the people wouldn't tolerate anything other than change and would back it up with direct action.

Some localities did, but largely no. I'm assuming you're referencing the George Floyd bill, go look at what it actually says.

Yes. Do you remember those walls of names of people who got killed with no particular justice, and notice that the names basically stop in 2020

Police killings in the US have been rapidly increasing since 2020 your anecdotes and what the media chooses to report are not going to be good/accurate reflections of reality.

we're switching away from the democratic justice system completely and into ICE as the new Gestapo

The US justice system was never democratic, and DHS (ICE as a subsidiary) was explicitly created by Bush Jr. to function that way. I apologize for my frustration and I'm glad you're finally on board/aware of it but you're also 25 years late my dude.

DUDE THEY BURNED DOWN THE FUCKING POLICE STATION

You are correct that I am not giving those involved enough credit for that level of bravery and action, but it also wasn't a consistent trend and with the benefit of foresight we can look back and realize that no police reform came from any of it.

Millions of people were in the streets this past weekend. Is it enough? Fuck no. Did any of them get gunned down by state or city level cops? Or even rubber-bulleted? Not that I'm aware of.

Because they threw a parade instead of a riot. The pro-palestinian protests absolutely did face that level of repression.

The real issue is that you keep contradicting yourself so which is it:

A. the 2020 protests reformed the police and we're all safe now.

B. We're entering an era where the already abysmal human rights abuses are about to become far worse.

I don't have a good answer for you, I have a:

Your thesis is fundamentally flawed, if we are ever going to get an answer you need to stop getting mad at the people working to help you find a solution.

What I (and others) are trying to tell you is that the christofascist fuck cult goes much deeper than the surface level that you are fixated on. The "deep flaws" you see in the Democratic party aren't bugs, they're 'features'.

The current status quo is deeply broken, I think we can both agree on that, yes?

The threat of violence (along with capability) has historically been a very effective tool for change (for better and worse), but I do no not see it being effective in a world where drone strikes, autonomous murder copters and nuclear weapons are a thing.

I also argue that the concept of electoralism is fundamentally broken and so electing more Republicans, Democrats, 3rd parties, goldfish, etc. is not going to solve/change anything either.

Accelerationism replaces current problems with worse ones, but my understanding is that if you're focus is on your grandchildren and thinking in the timescale of centuries then maybe. IMO it's one hell of a big gamble with an incredibly high cost and low odds of substantial/any progress.

What are your thoughts?

Motivated people to get off the couch and do what exactly? Other than skulls caved in what was the result? Was there any actual police reform? Was there a massive shift of funding away from incarceration as the cure-all? Have the number of extrajudicial murders decreased?

Yes, I am saying that police militarization has resulted in a populace that is unable/unwilling to revolt in even the slightest of ways since the uncomfortable truth that all Americans live under is that even something as minor, routine and unintentional as speeding can be reason for death. Much less any meaningful/intentional disobedience.

It is a very direct, but often overlooked, reason for a lot of what we are currently seeing today. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone as even the US founders knew you can't have a functioning democracy while staring down the barrel of a gun. That's what the whole "standing military" thing was about.

As an aside, why are you coming at a "I completely agree, here's another interesting facet/perspective" comment where you don't see the connection with such hostility and defensiveness instead of curiosity?

Turns out decades of "stop resisting or you will get shot and it will be your fault" has some real nasty side effects...

You talked right past the inherent contradictions and did not see them.

Assuming the US election process remains unchanged for the foreseeable future how do you get electoral reforms using the electoral process that you agree needs reforms?

They aren't the same, one's a sword and one's a shield. The shield can't effectively stab, but the sword can't either if it's forced to parry instead.

I engaged because it seemed like there was agreement, just miscommunication. Glad I was able to help cut through it :D. Appreciate you!

The difference is the viewpoint:

attacking the Dems aren't helpful because they currently have no power. The other party is causing a lot of damage and there seems to be no stopping them

If you buy into the underlying premises of how a liberal democracy functions (liberal used here as a technical term, not as a perjorative) then the only ones who have the power to stop the other party is the Dems and they actively choose not to. They're neither down, nor out they're doing their job of controlled opposition exactly as they are supposed to.

A good tool/exercise for analyzing your (and other's) beliefs is logic trees, with the goal of taking any complex belief and determined what your core axioms are, being on the lookout for tautologies (God is real -> because the Bible says so -> because God is real...) and axioms that don't hold up to scrutiny.

If you do the exercise correctly then you should find that most of those "beliefs that can’t be objectively proven or disproven" have belief dependencies that can be objectively (and often easily) proven/disproven.