Your Once and Final Supreme Double Impeachee

[S485122]

Originally Posted by retina

So the answer is to ask for help when you don't want it, and say nothing when you do want help. And Trump will do the opposite of your request just to spite you. Just like any recalcitrant 6 year-old would do.

Trump is not like a recalcitrant 6 year old : at that age most people have started socialising, they understand, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes denying it, that others are also people. The problem with people suffering from "Narcissistic personality disorder" like Trump^* is that it is as if their "social" development stopped at the stage when a child doesn't yet understand that the "moving objects" around him are also people. ;-)

Jacob

* The wikipedia article about NPD, speaks about meeting five of nine criteria to "qualify". I'd say that Trump, even if he has qualities, meets nine out of nine ;-)

[Dr Sardonicus]

Il Duce's jack-booted government thugs -- coming soon to New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland

The Navy veteran stands passively in Portland, Oregon, amid swirling tear gas. One of the militarized federal agents deployed by President Donald Trump swings a baton at him with full force. With both hands. Five times.

Under the assault, 53-year-old Christopher David seems like a redwood tree — impervious to the blows. But in a video shot by a reporter, another officer — wearing green military camouflage, a helmet and gas mask — sprays David full in the face with what appears to be pepper gas.
<snip>
There was no talking. The federal officers, in full tactical gear, came charging out of the federal building.

"They came out in this phalanx, running, and then they plowed into a bunch of protesters in the intersection of the street and knocked them over. They came out to fight," David said. One officer pointed a semi-automatic weapon at David's chest, he said, and video shows another shoving him backwards as he tried to talk with the officers.

"I took a couple steps back, straightened up, and then just stood my ground right there, arms down by my side," David recalled.

One officer began whacking at David with the baton. When he doesn't fall or even flinch, another officer sprays him full in the face. David then retreats a few steps while making an obscene gesture.

"They are thugs and goons," David said. "I couldn't recognize anything tactically that they were attempting to do that was even remotely related to crowd control. It looked to me like a gang of guys with sticks."

David will need reconstructive surgery with pins and plates on his ring finger that was shattered. A bone in his hand was also broken.

He's not going back out to protest.

"My ex-wife and my daughter would kill me if I did that. They're so angry at me for doing it in the first place because I got beat up," he said. "I'm not a redwood tree. I'm an overweight, 53-year-old man."

[rogue]

If people think that the economy is more important than the systemic racism in this country, then they need to reconsider their priorities. Systemic racism should be seen as a bigger problem as it is tied to so many other issues such as poverty, crime, lack of access to health care, etc.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by rogue

If people think that the economy is more important than the systemic racism in this country, then they need to reconsider their priorities. Systemic racism should be seen as a bigger problem as it is tied to so many other issues such as poverty, crime, lack of access to health care, etc.

I think it's a mistake to think of racism as "systemic." The legal underpinnings of Jim Crow were dismantled by the Civil Rights Movement and related legal challenges (notably Brown v. Board of Education which overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, the decision that had enshrined the legal farce of "separate but equal" into law). "The colorblind society" incorporates the same mistake.

The thing is, "society" is an abstraction. It's people that are racist. It was a notable step forward to remove the legal bulwarks that endorsed and institutionalized racist practices. But removing them didn't get rid of racism or racists. With the evisceration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, has come a new wave of attempts to disenfranchise those who are insufficiently wealthy, white, or Republican as pent-up racism, coupled with Social Darwinism, finds a new way to the fore.

Segueing to Black Lives Matter, the reaction of one person to whom I showed the video of Christopher David getting wailed on by government thugs in Portland might be sobering because a lot of folks here in the good ol' USA share similar sentiments: "They told him to move. He didn't move." Never mind that they did not tell him to move. Never mind that he wasn't acting aggressive or threatening, but simply standing with his hands at his sides. Never mind that, even if they had told him to move, failure to comply would not justify or even excuse an aggravated-assault level of force (the routine response by an actual law-enforcement officer would have been to arrest him). In short, he had it coming because he shouldn't have been there.

[retina]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

... (the routine response by an actual law-enforcement officer would have been to arrest him).

Arrest him for what? Standing still?

[rogue]

One could put it this way "systemic colorblindness has a disproportionately negative effect on minorities". Conservatives like to use the "one size fits all approach" implying that if it works for whites, it should work for blacks under the assumption that everyone is on the same playing field.

I find today's conservatism to have a complete lack of empathy for minorities and the struggles they face.

Combine "systemic colorblindness" and "dispassionate conservatism" with racism and you create a system that makes it very difficult for minorities to improve their situation.

I'm waiting for conservatives to realize that improving urban schools has a much bigger impact on the economic health of this country than giving a tax break to the wealthy. It should be apparent with the stimulus money. The poor will spend that money to pay bills, buy essentials, and keep their home. The rich are less likely to spend that money. They will sit on it until the economy improves.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by retina

Arrest him for what? Standing still?

If a law-enforcement officer tells you to leave and you don't move, you are subject to arrest for "failing to comply with a lawful order from a law-enforcement officer" (or from any person having the legal authority). It is common practice in such situations to inform uncooperative individuals that they will be arrested if they don't comply, thus giving them a chance to avoid arrest, and for the officer to avoid a bunch of paperwork.

Firefighters and other first responders also have the authority to order you to get out of their operations areas. If you don't leave, they'll probably hold you until they can summon a law officer to haul you off to jail.

But IMO the guys who clubbed and pepper-sprayed Christopher David didn't tell him to move. If they'd been interested in making him move, a couple of them could have frog-marched him some distance and told him to be on his merry way.

But they obviously weren't doing law enforcement. They were doing intimidation. And now, the ranks of the protesters in Portland have swelled considerably, as indignant citizens march in the streets to express their desire that the jack-booted government thugs leave their fair city, and public officials keep trying to tell the Administration that they didn't ask for their "help," that their presence is making things worse, and it's past time to get them the heck out of their state. They've also gone to court. A federal judge -- who works in the very courthouse in Portland where the action is -- has heard their request for a restraining order. No word when a ruling might come.

[retina]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

If a law-enforcement officer tells you to leave and you don't move, you are subject to arrest for "failing to comply with a lawful order from a law-enforcement officer" (or from any person having the legal authority).

Most other countries the police would politely say to someone please give us some space we have a job to do, and give a reason for why it has to be precisely where the person currently is. IOW it isn't just a random "we need to show our authority so f-off, or else".

All this ordering people around is why they get so much trouble directed back at them.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by retina

Most other countries the police would politely say to someone please give us some space we have a job to do, and give a reason for why it has to be precisely where the person currently is. IOW it isn't just a random "we need to show our authority so f-off, or else".

All this ordering people around is why they get so much trouble directed back at them.

It's generally that way here in the good ol' USA too. But that's with real cops, who know the low-key approach is generally the first option, especially with people who aren't overtly being troublemakers. Threats of arrest are reserved for the thick-headed, and actual arrest for the utterly refractory.

But the folks Il Duce sent to Portland aren't real cops. They're designated thugs, whose mission is to intimidate people. Alas, Il Duce's ignorance of our country's history and origins may well come back to bite him.

That approach didn't work so well for the British after the "Boston Tea Party" with the "Coercive Acts" AKA the Intolerable Acts, General Gage being point man.

A former President, Jimmy Carter, wrote a fictional novel (2003) based on how our War for Independence was won in the South after the British tried a coercive approach there. The book's title is The Hornet's Nest.

[mart_r]

Originally Posted by retina

Just like any recalcitrant 6 year-old would do.

There's a reason I found the episode "Peter for president" from the series "Angelo Rules" so funny...

[kruoli]

Originally Posted by mart_r

"Peter for president".

For some reason that sounds like a Family Guy episode (yes, beside the obvious character name correlation).