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Protesting peacefully is an American right, this will be a list of real patriots. However, this is a bit scary. Corporations have become the brownshirts and we

Protesting peacefully is an American right, this will be a list of real patriots. However, this is a bit scary. Corporations have become the brownshirts and we are inching towards a one-party authoritarian system like China it seems. Unfortunately the divide and conquer strategy of the two party system in the US makes people honor party over country and this is a problem. The only solution is to be more independent. "I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." -- Thomas Jefferson

leereeves 10y ago
> this will be a list of real patriots. Isn't this is a list of all arrests, not merely protesters?
- hedora 10y ago
  select * from arrests where indictment = null Probably also group by citizen id and sort by count. :-)
- thehardsphere 10y ago
  The list is of people who underwent a pre-employment biometric background check. So, roughly, anybody who works for a bank, is a public school teacher, acquires a security clearance, or is in the military. The level of "real patriotism" on the list is going to roughly correspond with the "real patriotism" of those groups of people. I don't understand why there's so much fascination with the idea that this is some protester-busting tool. The article merely posits the hypothetical scenario that some people could be punished by their employer, because their employer might get a rap back and they wouldn't be able to tell it was First Amendment activity as opposed to some actual serious crime, because the FBI and local law enforcement is bad at data entry. Somehow people read that and think that the point of the whole system is "corporate fascism stopping the patriotic protesting democracy" when none of the employers actually care about that. Or in other words, an emergent problem in the system that might occur is being assumed to be the central planned feature of it.
  - biafra 10y ago
    It is none of my employers business whether I was arrested. It might OK, to be informed about convictions for certain crimes for certain jobs. Knowing this absolutely has a chilling effect.
    - thehardsphere 10y ago
      I can think of many cases where it could be your employers business that you were arrested: 1. You're going to miss work because you're in jail. 2. You were arrested for a crime that's related to your work. Like, money laundering or fraud if you work at a bank. Or having sex with a minor if you're a teacher. 3. You work in a field that requires lawful behavior from employees at all times preserve the integrity of the organization. Like, say, law enforcement.
      - nommm-nommm 10y ago
        Being arrested doesn't mean you are guilty of a crime, that's the issue.
        thehardsphere 10y ago
        Yes, but your employer still has a PR mess that they have to mop up while you and the criminal justice system figure that out.
lettergram 10y ago
Kinda funny this comes from Thomas Jefferson, as he had a famous feud with John Adams
- benjaminjackman 10y ago
  Well they did patch things a few years after Jefferson's presidency ended. So much so that Adams' last words were "Jefferson still survives." And oddly enough, he was mistaken, Jefferson had actually died 5 hours earlier on the same day, July 4th, 1826.
battlebot 10y ago
Well, plus, you have a lot of none-too-bright lefties who cheered Obama's actions for eight years and who can't see that conservative Americans don't want authoritarianism but rather prefer smaller, less intrusive government, lower taxes, and more freedom. But at the same time, they know they can't have any of that if we keep importing the third world into our neighborhoods--crime went through the roof in 2016. The unintended consequences of open borders are obvious to see.
ihsw 10y ago
Protesting peacefully != destroying private property and committing unprovoked acts of violence to innocents There's a word for those that use random violence to effect change in society -- terrorists.
- pyre 10y ago
  Not every protester is doing that though. If you go to a peaceful protest that turns into a riot, you may be arrested even if you did not commit any acts of vandalism or violence. Basically just because you were there. Is this the world you want to live in?
  - coderdude 10y ago
    I've watched a lot of these protests-turned-riot and you don't see innocent people on the sidelines being hauled away. You hardly see any of the violent and destructive agitators being hauled away. I don't think the scenario you're describing is realistic whatsoever.
    - kalkin 10y ago
      You've watched a lot of them, but you've never seen or heard of "kettling"? Odd. I have seen it and experienced it. (I'm also curious what instances of protests-turned-riot you're referring to. The US hasn't had many riots, in any meaningful sense, recently. Do you mean someone smashing a window?)
      - coderdude 10y ago
        There was one a couple of days ago at Berkeley where 150 or so masked people smashed windows and set things on fire in an attempt to block a conservative from speaking there. Causing $100k in damage to private property in order to curtail other's free speech isn't something that should be glossed over or minimized by calling it protesting. There's the riot at NYU where more violent agitators showed up to prevent Gavin McInnes from speaking, where he was attacked with pepper spray. On the night at Berkeley, a woman wearing a Trump hat was pepper sprayed while giving an interview for a news network. These are the facts. Call it what you want, but this is violence and destruction with the intent to silence people with an opposing point of view. It's not civil disobedience or protesting and more like terrorism. As for your other question about whether or not I've heard of kettling, I have. The fact that it exists does not convince me that innocent bystanders need to fear that. In instances where you may have seen that, such as the inauguration of the president, charges were brought against some of those individuals. Which suggests the goal wasn't to arrest bystanders. By the way, I don't know if you watched that one live or after it took place but there was a ton of chaos. People were throwing objects like glass bottles at the police in riot gear. Again, many of the people were dressed in all black with masks on. If you want a very real problem to attack, that's one to focus on.
fudgepack991 10y ago
Sorry to tell ya but it's all to protect corporations should the people stop believing free market fairy tales and figure out the upper class is their true enemy. Here's a speech from national security advisory of the united states about his worries about the peoples of the world waking up politically. That's why the spying is pervasive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY Testing theories of representative government https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi... "Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role." Crisis of democracy http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Democracy-Governability-Democracies-Trilateral/dp/0814713653 http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Democracy-Governability-Democra...
jordanb 10y ago
> Corporations have become the brownshirts and we are inching towards a one-party authoritarian system like China it seems. This is a really interesting observation. I don't think there's a direct analog between brownshirts and corporations because the former were just thugs who Hitler discarded when they were no longer useful. Currently I think the corporations are in charge, at least of the "centrist" core of each party. We've had a huge, laudable improvement in the rights of marginalized people in the past few decades. This has been happening substantially because many corporations and corporate elite have been supporters. But I can't help but see this support as at least partially self serving, because improvements in social justice help keep the "culture wars" alive, dividing the population up almost 50/50 into red team and blue team along social rather than economic or class lines. Right now we have a president who won his election by campaigning against the corporate establishment, but who is also a fully paid up member of that establishment. He's now picking fights with the very federal bureaucracy he's supposed to lead, as well as the judiciary and many well connected corporations. How it all plays out is something I can't even begin to guess but it's not something the establishment planned for or wanted. But getting back to your original statement about brownshirts. I think that absolutely we are increasingly developing a system where corporations and the government work together to monitor dissent and then corporations form the enforcement arm of this apparatus (to the extent that dissenters can't be brought up on charges) by denying their economic livelihood.

leereeves 10y ago

> this will be a list of real patriots. Isn't this is a list of all arrests, not merely protesters?

hedora 10y ago
select * from arrests where indictment = null Probably also group by citizen id and sort by count. :-)
thehardsphere 10y ago
The list is of people who underwent a pre-employment biometric background check. So, roughly, anybody who works for a bank, is a public school teacher, acquires a security clearance, or is in the military. The level of "real patriotism" on the list is going to roughly correspond with the "real patriotism" of those groups of people. I don't understand why there's so much fascination with the idea that this is some protester-busting tool. The article merely posits the hypothetical scenario that some people could be punished by their employer, because their employer might get a rap back and they wouldn't be able to tell it was First Amendment activity as opposed to some actual serious crime, because the FBI and local law enforcement is bad at data entry. Somehow people read that and think that the point of the whole system is "corporate fascism stopping the patriotic protesting democracy" when none of the employers actually care about that. Or in other words, an emergent problem in the system that might occur is being assumed to be the central planned feature of it.
- biafra 10y ago
  It is none of my employers business whether I was arrested. It might OK, to be informed about convictions for certain crimes for certain jobs. Knowing this absolutely has a chilling effect.
  - thehardsphere 10y ago
    I can think of many cases where it could be your employers business that you were arrested: 1. You're going to miss work because you're in jail. 2. You were arrested for a crime that's related to your work. Like, money laundering or fraud if you work at a bank. Or having sex with a minor if you're a teacher. 3. You work in a field that requires lawful behavior from employees at all times preserve the integrity of the organization. Like, say, law enforcement.
    - nommm-nommm 10y ago
      Being arrested doesn't mean you are guilty of a crime, that's the issue.
      - thehardsphere 10y ago
        Yes, but your employer still has a PR mess that they have to mop up while you and the criminal justice system figure that out.

lettergram 10y ago

Kinda funny this comes from Thomas Jefferson, as he had a famous feud with John Adams

benjaminjackman 10y ago
Well they did patch things a few years after Jefferson's presidency ended. So much so that Adams' last words were "Jefferson still survives." And oddly enough, he was mistaken, Jefferson had actually died 5 hours earlier on the same day, July 4th, 1826.

battlebot 10y ago

Well, plus, you have a lot of none-too-bright lefties who cheered Obama's actions for eight years and who can't see that conservative Americans don't want authoritarianism but rather prefer smaller, less intrusive government, lower taxes, and more freedom. But at the same time, they know they can't have any of that if we keep importing the third world into our neighborhoods--crime went through the roof in 2016. The unintended consequences of open borders are obvious to see.

ihsw 10y ago

Protesting peacefully != destroying private property and committing unprovoked acts of violence to innocents There's a word for those that use random violence to effect change in society -- terrorists.

pyre 10y ago
Not every protester is doing that though. If you go to a peaceful protest that turns into a riot, you may be arrested even if you did not commit any acts of vandalism or violence. Basically just because you were there. Is this the world you want to live in?
- coderdude 10y ago
  I've watched a lot of these protests-turned-riot and you don't see innocent people on the sidelines being hauled away. You hardly see any of the violent and destructive agitators being hauled away. I don't think the scenario you're describing is realistic whatsoever.
  - kalkin 10y ago
    You've watched a lot of them, but you've never seen or heard of "kettling"? Odd. I have seen it and experienced it. (I'm also curious what instances of protests-turned-riot you're referring to. The US hasn't had many riots, in any meaningful sense, recently. Do you mean someone smashing a window?)
    - coderdude 10y ago
      There was one a couple of days ago at Berkeley where 150 or so masked people smashed windows and set things on fire in an attempt to block a conservative from speaking there. Causing $100k in damage to private property in order to curtail other's free speech isn't something that should be glossed over or minimized by calling it protesting. There's the riot at NYU where more violent agitators showed up to prevent Gavin McInnes from speaking, where he was attacked with pepper spray. On the night at Berkeley, a woman wearing a Trump hat was pepper sprayed while giving an interview for a news network. These are the facts. Call it what you want, but this is violence and destruction with the intent to silence people with an opposing point of view. It's not civil disobedience or protesting and more like terrorism. As for your other question about whether or not I've heard of kettling, I have. The fact that it exists does not convince me that innocent bystanders need to fear that. In instances where you may have seen that, such as the inauguration of the president, charges were brought against some of those individuals. Which suggests the goal wasn't to arrest bystanders. By the way, I don't know if you watched that one live or after it took place but there was a ton of chaos. People were throwing objects like glass bottles at the police in riot gear. Again, many of the people were dressed in all black with masks on. If you want a very real problem to attack, that's one to focus on.

fudgepack991 10y ago

Sorry to tell ya but it's all to protect corporations should the people stop believing free market fairy tales and figure out the upper class is their true enemy. Here's a speech from national security advisory of the united states about his worries about the peoples of the world waking up politically. That's why the spying is pervasive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY Testing theories of representative government https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi... "Intended as an internal document. Good reading to understand the nature of rich democracies and the fact that the common people are not allowed to play a role." Crisis of democracy http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Democracy-Governability-Democracies-Trilateral/dp/0814713653 http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Democracy-Governability-Democra...

jordanb 10y ago

> Corporations have become the brownshirts and we are inching towards a one-party authoritarian system like China it seems. This is a really interesting observation. I don't think there's a direct analog between brownshirts and corporations because the former were just thugs who Hitler discarded when they were no longer useful. Currently I think the corporations are in charge, at least of the "centrist" core of each party. We've had a huge, laudable improvement in the rights of marginalized people in the past few decades. This has been happening substantially because many corporations and corporate elite have been supporters. But I can't help but see this support as at least partially self serving, because improvements in social justice help keep the "culture wars" alive, dividing the population up almost 50/50 into red team and blue team along social rather than economic or class lines. Right now we have a president who won his election by campaigning against the corporate establishment, but who is also a fully paid up member of that establishment. He's now picking fights with the very federal bureaucracy he's supposed to lead, as well as the judiciary and many well connected corporations. How it all plays out is something I can't even begin to guess but it's not something the establishment planned for or wanted. But getting back to your original statement about brownshirts. I think that absolutely we are increasingly developing a system where corporations and the government work together to monitor dissent and then corporations form the enforcement arm of this apparatus (to the extent that dissenters can't be brought up on charges) by denying their economic livelihood.