You’re probably the type of person who would end up being a shooter if this is your mentality.
This is political violence. Going around trying to assassinate people you don’t like is not self defense. Your presumption of violence is NOT a justification of using violence. Two wrongs don’t make a right, you’re still in the wrong. This mentality that violence is a just mean to achieve political goals is quite literally what terrorism is. This is the exact line of logic that Hamas used to justify the Oct 7th attack against civilians or what the Turks used to justify the Armenian genocide or what Hitler used to justify the Holocaust. You have to be some type of soulless ghoul to think this type of behavior is acceptable in a civil society. The majority of Americans already don’t support what Trump spews from liberals to independents to the apolitical to even some conservatives. If you criticize Trump and MAGA of being pro violence then you have to stick by your principles and be anti violence.
Bernie’s response is without a doubt the correct one. Not only is condemning the violence morally correct, but it shows that he stand by his principles and his condemnation helps remove fuel from the fire by not encouraging more violence. Bernie is right, be like Bernie.
Do people think that forcing children to give birth isn’t violence? That having the bank seize your house isn’t violence?
Imagine the privileged delusion that you’re above all that — that you’ve transcended the zombie horde of apocalyptic subhumanity clutching at your ankles, literally trying to rob your children, to poison them, to end all life on earth. The treacherous religious maniacs, the ignoramuses, the money-hungry, fashion-obsessed, sports-car-maniacal narcissists who would eat a puppy alive for a Rolex. That these orc-like creatures aren’t here to torment and torture and pillage.
But sure. Let’s not stoop to their level by struggling too much as they eat us alive.
Cool. Maybe we’ll end up being bunk mates in the concentration camp.
I don’t know what to tell you. Sometimes politics are violence.
Oh ffs, this is such a terminally online take. You’re not the equivalent of a Jew during the Holocaust nor is Trump Hitler and MAGA Nazis. Don’t get me wrong, Trump is vile person to his core. He has no redeemable qualities and his policies have done a lot of harm. His supporters are also brain dead morons who operate like a cult. I’m with you there, BUT despite that, we have to operate within the context of our reality.
The reality is that Trump and MAGA aren’t the equivalent of the Nazis, not everything you don’t like is Nazi equitable. This is the problem with modern discourse, our education system is rotten that people literally cannot comprehend history outside of WWII. History did not stop and end there, and the vast majority that happens in the world is not comparable to those specific time period. There are a lot of other wannabe dictators in history like Orban or Modi or Erdogan or Yeltsin or Haftar or whatever. Worst case scenario is that Trump does become a dictator, however, 99.99% of dictators of History aren’t like Hitler, he was uniquely evil.
With that being said, Trump isn’t a dictator now, and we have a very real chance of defeating him democratically. We have a very large and powerful coalition against him, we have all the dirt against him, we are using the national due process, and we are using legitimate means to achieve power in this country. All that political violence would do is give Trump and his supporters the rationale to justify that they are right, that Trump is a martyr, and that it is okay for them to use even more violence. We can’t stoop down to their level and become like them. We have to shut down that type of behavior, not normalize it.
Do you know why? It’s because we want to live in a civil society where peaceful democratic power transfers is the one and only legitimate means of gaining power. We can’t go on self righteous moral crusades where we use violence on people we don’t like to achieve political goals. Do you know why? Because that’s terrorism by definition, and to use something you’re familiar with, it’s what the Nazis did. Political violence is wrong on principle. It’s wrong when Trump and his cult do it, it’s wrong when we do it, it’s wrong when anybody does it.
The man himself is the sole person to have attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Sometimes there are exceptions to the ‘don’t stoop to their level rule’, those times are usually life or death. Another Trump presidency would be catastrophic enough, purely going from his spoken intentions, to justify his murder an infinite number of times over.
Well, sometimes when the hard political question is “Should we kill all of these people in our outgroups?” the answer is violence. Not always. Sometimes people just die in mass.
So trump’s fanbase using violence is completely fine then? It isn’t a “presumption of violence.” Maybe you haven’t followed a single piece of history of the past 4 years.
Breaking into Nancy pelosi’s house in an assassination attempt, physically forcing raped girls and women to risk their lives to bear a rapists child, beating up and sometimes killing trans people for using the “wrong” bathroom, hosting and rallying known terrorist groups against their political opponents, kidnapping the governor of Michigan and DNC vice chair??
Storming the fucking capitol of the US with gallows set up trying to kill politicians and the vice president??? What world do you live in where the MAGA cult is not using political violence? Seriously? Which was one of 11 damn republican terror attacks THAT MONTH.. In what world is there a “presumption of violence” when the right wing organizations have literally layed out a public plan for installing a fascist dictatorship and said that there will be blood if the rest of the country doesn’t submit??
It’s wrong when they do it, it’s wrong we do it, it’s wrong when anybody does it. That’s because political violence is wrong on principle. I’m not exactly sure what you’re goal is here, do you think two wrong would make a right? Do you perhaps think an eye for an eye is a good concept to live by? Stop trying to justify violence as a legitimate means of achieving political goals, that’s literally terrorism.
How very 1932 of you.
I guess counterterrorism is just called terrorism now according to you. Looks like america, aost every every European nation, China, and many Asian nations are terrorists states to you.
Do you perhaps think an eye for an eye is a good concept to live by?
no, but nothing is so black and white. do you perhaps think that bullies should always be acquiesced to? that defending yourself from attackers is inherently and unilaterally immoral?
i’m trying to mind my own business and live my own life peacefully. they’re the ones constantly (publicly) cheering for me and my kind to be dragged out of our homes and shot for virtue of being born either non-white or non-straight (depending on flavor of republican, maybe both).
the reason violence is no longer acceptable as a mechanism for political change is that we built a system to address grievances without it: our representative democracy. we rose above the need by using the law to ensure everyone can be heard. Indeed the very system republicans are attempting to dismantle and replace with autocracy; they’ve already thoroughly corrupted the highest courts in our country to do so. they intend to continue to close all reasonable avenues of political resolution specifically for the purpose of being able to call any resistance to their rule “terrorism”, as you just have. this itself is an act of political violence.
if I corner you in an alley with a gun so you have nowhere to run and tell you to give me your wallet, but I haven’t shot at you or even aimed it at you yet, does this make me non-violent? is it acceptable? would you fight back, or capitulate? how about if I then tell you to leave but not your partner? would you fight back then, or just leave them to whatever fate might befall them? be careful with your answer: if you say anything other than “I’d leave them with you and continue about my day like normal”, you will be seen as a dangerous criminal. the police won’t help you, they don’t help your kind, and you probably brought it upon yourself in their eyes.
