Portland radicals deface and topple statue of George Washington

[Arctish]

Rally attendance today would argue that the commercials need a lot of work.

Weird how Derec is claiming the grievances are "mostly made up" when we have an 8 minute video of a police officer murdering a prone, non-resisting black man.

And other videos of police doing the same to White guys and no one gives a shit.

Did they kneel on him until he was dead?

 

[Trausti]

And other videos of police doing the same to White guys and no one gives a shit.

Did they kneel on him until he was dead?

What, like Tony Timpa? Remember all the protests, rioting, and kneeling for him?

 

[Ford]

And other videos of police doing the same to White guys and no one gives a shit.

Did they kneel on him until he was dead?

See, Trausti was saying that police brutality is irrelevant because they also abuse white people.


Please do try to keep up.

 

[Derec]

What, like Tony Timpa? Remember all the protests, rioting, and kneeling for him?

Or that white kid with the wii controller ...

But I know, all that white privilege...

 

[Arctish]

What, like Tony Timpa? Remember all the protests, rioting, and kneeling for him?

Or that white kid with the wii controller ...

But I know, all that white privilege...

I know for a fact the cops didn't kneel on that white kid for almost 9 minutes until he was dead, Derec.

I don't know if they did it to Tony Timpa, or the guy in Trausti's picture. Do you?

 

[Enigma]

What, like Tony Timpa? Remember all the protests, rioting, and kneeling for him?

Or that white kid with the wii controller ...

But I know, all that white privilege...

I know for a fact the cops didn't kneel on that white kid for almost 9 minutes until he was dead, Derec.

I don't know if they did it to Tony Timpa, or the guy in Trausti's picture. Do you?

If only there was a way to find out...

 

[Arctish]

I know for a fact the cops didn't kneel on that white kid for almost 9 minutes until he was dead, Derec.

I don't know if they did it to Tony Timpa, or the guy in Trausti's picture. Do you?

If only there was a way to find out...

If only Trausti had provided a link.

Even so, I've already been reading up on it.

It doesn't appear that the cops knelt on him until he died. It looks like they got off him while he was still breathing. And at least one of them was reassuring Timpa he was going to be all right, unlike how Chauvin and his fellow police officers treated Floyd.

So, while there are some similarities in how Timpa and Floyd died, the behavior of the Dallas cops is no where near the level of depraved indifference and casual cruelty Chauvin displayed. And Trausti still hasn't said if the cops in that picture he posted killed that guy in handcuffs.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

George Washington statue toppled during 22nd consecutive day of Portland protests

I guess NO historical white people are acceptable to the Far Left.

Sad is the land which needs a hero.
~Bertolt Brecht

 

[Testy Calibrate]

The toppling/destruction of statutes is minor compared to the grievances driving these protests. This type of damage/destruction detracts from the real grievances and allows the some people to ignore the big picture.

people who get uptight about statues of heroes almost by definition already don't have a big picture

 

[Testy Calibrate]

So, you’re okay with Mohamed’s warmongering, slavery, murder, and rape? But that doesn’t matter. So long as those destroying feel their cause is just, then it is just. Apparently.

No, I'm not. I would definitely oppose erecting statues of Mohammed in public places. So would every living Muslim, because the danger of deifying human beings is forefront in their theology and always has been.

Beyond deifying humans, reifying value systems has its own shortcomings

 

[Testy Calibrate]

The toppling/destruction of statutes is minor compared to the grievances driving these protests. This type of damage/destruction detracts from the real grievances and allows the some people to ignore the big picture.

Bullshit. The "grievances" are mostly made up. Many orders of magnitude more black people are killed by other blacks than by police, and vast majority of police shootings are justified.

George Washington wasn't perfect, but then nobody is. He was still a great man who does not deserve this bullshit.

On the other hand, the Far Left has just given Trump a TV commercial or two.
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the grievances of blacks in America are mostly made up. Well, that's a hot take. However, belief systems are either philosophy or power structures. It's an important skill to be able to recognize the difference

 

[Testy Calibrate]

If they want to take down currently living slave traders, I for one am all for it.

You'd have to go to the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia for example, slavery was legal until 1962. In Yemen, 1962 or 1967 depending on part of country (it was divided then). Oman, 1970. In Mauritania (not ME but nearly 100% Muslim) not until 1981!

But to point that out is not politically correct as it doesn't uniquely demonize people of European descent!

Who defends Middle Eastern slavery?

fascists

 

[Testy Calibrate]

It’s not about you taking a pro-slavery stance. No one on this forum is pro-slavery. It’s about ideological justification to destroy. If the defacing of Washington can be excused because the destroyers feel their cause just, then destruction of mosques is equally excused if these destroyers feel their cause just.

Except that their cause is not, in fact, just.

not sure i can go quite this far.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Except that their cause is not, in fact, just.

Neither is the cause of those who destroyed the Washington statue.

In fact, being against Islam is far more justified than being against US and our founding fathers.

I think at this point, it is not about being against the founders so much as the power structure that has emerged. Capitalism has failed capitalists. The problem of power was not solved by the us constitution, merely paused

 

[Testy Calibrate]

So, apparently the statute of U.S. Grant in Golden State Park has come down.

And the statues of Junípero Serra and Francis Scott Key.

Toppling Serra's statue is easy to understand. I don't know why they toppled the other two.

Time for a little historical research.

It doesn't matter the reason! “Destroy the old world! Establish the new!”

Apparently the world has grown moribund and needs to be reinvented. Social behavior is not random. The communists in Russia and SE Asia did a lot of cultural erasure but it's a little hard to blame them. What came before was pretty distinctly horrible. Oppression has a way of pissing off the oppressed. We are in one of the time periods where systems of oppression are being challenged. We can only hope they will fall and that the new forms of oppression are less odious than the last, right?

 

[Testy Calibrate]

I know one statue that is probably going to be safe from the purge by the cultural revolutionaries:

View attachment 28283

But who knows. Maybe they are more Troskyite ...

I've been to the Lenin statue. I always viewed it as Soviet kitsch, not to be taken seriously. Some guy bought it from Czechoslovakia after the fall to spare it from scrap. I don't think it should come down. Nor do I think all these other statues should come down. If all statues to flawed men must topple, then there would be no statues at all.

Speaking as a sculptor, that is a stupid thing to say. Statues are not all of heroes and ideologies.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

The reasons the mob has for toppling statues are irrelevant. No reason can legitimise their actions. If a city wants to remove statues from public land, it can decide the motion at the same time they rename streets and approve the new skate park and designate the off-leash status of public greenspaces.

Good fucking god, marauding gangs are not democracy.

If only democracy had been democratic. If only power had been limited. But now we have to deal with the consequences of systemic oppression and marginalization. This too shall pass.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

The reasons the mob has for toppling statues are irrelevant. No reason can legitimise their actions. If a city wants to remove statues from public land, it can decide the motion at the same time they rename streets and approve the new skate park and designate the off-leash status of public greenspaces.

Good fucking god, marauding gangs are not democracy.

Exactly. Well said.
We can have a conversation (and a vote) on what statues should be in public spaces, but mob action should not be tolerated.

the question is not what should be tolerated but what can be stopped. There are more people than there are police. Government is always subject to the social compact. The flip side of granting the legitimate use of force is ... granting the legitimate use of force.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Racism and police brutality are legitimate issues to normal decent human beings.

George Washington wasn't perfect, but then nobody is. He was still a great man who does not deserve this bullshit.

On the other hand, the Far Left has just given Trump a TV commercial or two.
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That response is a perfect example of my point - focus on the bark on the trees instead of the forest.

He's got a valid point--extremist behavior will push voters to the other side. It's the same as His Flatulence pushing people away from the Republicans.

I interact extensively with college aged people. In general, they do not care about the things that you seem to wish they would care about. They seem to recognize what a load of shit they have been handed and what you maybe think of as extreme, maybe they see it differently

 

[Testy Calibrate]

YEAH! Fuck the Constitution! No more mobs!

Where in the constitution is there a right to vandalism and destruction of property?

Also, you have still not replied to me in the other thread about those six apparent suicides that you insist are all "lynchings" without any evidence.

Maybe not the constitution, but

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.