7 ms·

On the other hand, avoiding conflict in the short-term will only embolden those who create and thrive on conflict. For these types of people, their next move is

by npunt 6y ago

On the other hand, avoiding conflict in the short-term will only embolden those who create and thrive on conflict. For these types of people, their next move is usually to escalate. You see this with bullies, abusive relationships, rapists, serial killers, terrorists, etc. They learn what they can get away with, they like the power it gives them, and they try something more. Therefore, we can't make decisions based on the fear of their response, even if we have a personal aversion to conflict. That's falling into the trap of the abused. We have to make decisions based on defending our principles and standing up for what we believe is right. No matter what, some people are going to be pissed off at any sufficiently meaningful decision (or indecision). If the people pissed off are violent types, well, then perhaps that's a sign the right decision was made. I understand that there's a hell of a lot of nuance to this - sometimes you don't poke the sleeping bear. I think Wednesday showed the bear is absolutely not asleep.

davesque 6y ago
Couldn't have said it better. Thank you for this.
nmfisher 6y ago
Nobody is saying “don’t arrest and prosecute the people who invaded the Capitol”. This is about the campaign finance/social media account/etc of the current sitting POTUS. You don’t need to condone the actions of the Capitol terrorists to take issue with him being banned from every platform having committed no crime (or at least, not having been convicted of any crime). A few hundred people invaded the Capitol, but tens of millions of people voted for Trump. We’re not talking about the former; I think it’s very reasonable to be concerned that this divisiveness might radicalise the latter.
- npunt 6y ago
  Serious question: Would those people have been at the Capitol without Trump's 'Stop the Steal' rhetoric?
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    Maybe, I don't know. There was a group of people arrested in Michigan (?) for the kidnapping of the Governor (?), so it's possible. But either way, I don't think it's relevant. If you want to boot someone off social media because they espouse a cause that others take too far, then there's a lot of BLM people who should receive the same fate. Anything else is rank hypocrisy. It's worth adding that I think Trump is a puerile moron and "the election was stolen" people are loons (even the ones who didn't break into the Capitol or attend a protest). I'm not even an American, I have no dog in this fight. But the double standard is so painfully clear, even from thousands of kilometres away. Applying these rules/bans/etc in such a blatantly partisan manner is only going to increase this divisiveness, the USA will tear itself apart from the inside.
    - yters 6y ago
      BLM rhetoric has resulted in the assassination of numerous police officers, yet no one is deplatforming BLM.
    - npunt 6y ago
      At least when it comes to BLM vs Capitol there are three very important differences that far outweigh the surface level similarities: 1. Power - what happened at the Capitol was conducted by people who have enjoyed broad political power, whereas the BLM protests were about the people who have been unjustly under the thumb (or knee) of those in power. 2. Message - the BLM protests were about very real and well documented and long-standing mistreatment of Black Americans at the hands of police, where the ‘stop the steal’ crowd is angry about a complete fabrication. 3. Stakes - is the event threatening to the foundation of society? I think this one is pretty straightforward. While on the surface the BLM and Capitol events look similar (large groups of people protesting, small groups within committing violence, some government buildings involved), their basis and moral authority are entirely different. As far as the decision to deplatform, the nature of these types of things is there will never and can never be a simple rule to dictate important judgment calls. Law is not code, nor are the actions or ToS’s of companies. Trump is such a singular figure that is completely unlike others, commanding a huge amount of power through 85M followers and the bully pulpit of the presidency. He is nothing like any BLM or frankly any other Twitter user that it’s almost seems like a joke to draw comparison. That can’t be ignored, in fact that’s the very point - he’s unique, and uniquely dangerous. There is no double standard because there is no comparison. He’s literally the most powerful person in America and Black people are as a group are the least powerful. That matters. As far as the consequences, well it’s damned if you do damned if you don’t as far as I can see. We have a lot of real problems and divisions in society, and now a lot of people have been whipped up into holding imagined grievances that some are likely to translate into violence down the line. Meanwhile the next few weeks are an incredibly vulnerable time in American democracy due to the power vacuum that occurs during a transfer of power, and based on what information we have available to us, it looks like violence and disruption was being planned prior to any deplatforming. That’s very scary, and we need to do what we can to reasonably minimize that risk.
- invisible 6y ago
  > We’re leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes, and then late in the evening or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of and bullshit, and all of a sudden. All of a sudden it started to happen. > Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican party. He’s got guts, he fights. He fights, and I’ll tell you. > We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. > We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. > I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. > It was going to be great. And now we’re out here fighting. > I want to thank the more than 140 members of the House. Those are warriors. ... Where is Hillary? Where is she? > But it used to be that they’d argue with me, I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight. I’d fight, they’d fight. ... What happened to Hunter? Where’s Hunter? > Now that’s many, many times what it would take to overthrow the state. Just that one element. 400,000 ballots appeared from nowhere, right after the election. (Use of “overthrow the state.”) > Let them get out. Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength. ... They want to indoctrinate your children. > We did good. We got rid of the ISIS caliphate. ... In Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat run cities deployed more than 500 illegal unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 unlawful votes. > When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. > Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future. > So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give… The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. - POTUS Trump That’s only part of the stuff he said during the speech immediately before they marched, at his direction, to the Capitol building. He mentioned being peaceful once in his speech. Most of the undertones of the speech were about fighting/being strong for their way of life and belief in him being the rightful winner.

by npunt 6y ago

davesque 6y ago

Couldn't have said it better. Thank you for this.

nmfisher 6y ago

Nobody is saying “don’t arrest and prosecute the people who invaded the Capitol”. This is about the campaign finance/social media account/etc of the current sitting POTUS. You don’t need to condone the actions of the Capitol terrorists to take issue with him being banned from every platform having committed no crime (or at least, not having been convicted of any crime). A few hundred people invaded the Capitol, but tens of millions of people voted for Trump. We’re not talking about the former; I think it’s very reasonable to be concerned that this divisiveness might radicalise the latter.

npunt 6y ago
Serious question: Would those people have been at the Capitol without Trump's 'Stop the Steal' rhetoric?
- nmfisher 6y ago
  Maybe, I don't know. There was a group of people arrested in Michigan (?) for the kidnapping of the Governor (?), so it's possible. But either way, I don't think it's relevant. If you want to boot someone off social media because they espouse a cause that others take too far, then there's a lot of BLM people who should receive the same fate. Anything else is rank hypocrisy. It's worth adding that I think Trump is a puerile moron and "the election was stolen" people are loons (even the ones who didn't break into the Capitol or attend a protest). I'm not even an American, I have no dog in this fight. But the double standard is so painfully clear, even from thousands of kilometres away. Applying these rules/bans/etc in such a blatantly partisan manner is only going to increase this divisiveness, the USA will tear itself apart from the inside.
  - yters 6y ago
    BLM rhetoric has resulted in the assassination of numerous police officers, yet no one is deplatforming BLM.
  - npunt 6y ago
    At least when it comes to BLM vs Capitol there are three very important differences that far outweigh the surface level similarities: 1. Power - what happened at the Capitol was conducted by people who have enjoyed broad political power, whereas the BLM protests were about the people who have been unjustly under the thumb (or knee) of those in power. 2. Message - the BLM protests were about very real and well documented and long-standing mistreatment of Black Americans at the hands of police, where the ‘stop the steal’ crowd is angry about a complete fabrication. 3. Stakes - is the event threatening to the foundation of society? I think this one is pretty straightforward. While on the surface the BLM and Capitol events look similar (large groups of people protesting, small groups within committing violence, some government buildings involved), their basis and moral authority are entirely different. As far as the decision to deplatform, the nature of these types of things is there will never and can never be a simple rule to dictate important judgment calls. Law is not code, nor are the actions or ToS’s of companies. Trump is such a singular figure that is completely unlike others, commanding a huge amount of power through 85M followers and the bully pulpit of the presidency. He is nothing like any BLM or frankly any other Twitter user that it’s almost seems like a joke to draw comparison. That can’t be ignored, in fact that’s the very point - he’s unique, and uniquely dangerous. There is no double standard because there is no comparison. He’s literally the most powerful person in America and Black people are as a group are the least powerful. That matters. As far as the consequences, well it’s damned if you do damned if you don’t as far as I can see. We have a lot of real problems and divisions in society, and now a lot of people have been whipped up into holding imagined grievances that some are likely to translate into violence down the line. Meanwhile the next few weeks are an incredibly vulnerable time in American democracy due to the power vacuum that occurs during a transfer of power, and based on what information we have available to us, it looks like violence and disruption was being planned prior to any deplatforming. That’s very scary, and we need to do what we can to reasonably minimize that risk.
invisible 6y ago
> We’re leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes, and then late in the evening or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of and bullshit, and all of a sudden. All of a sudden it started to happen. > Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican party. He’s got guts, he fights. He fights, and I’ll tell you. > We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. > We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong. > I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. > It was going to be great. And now we’re out here fighting. > I want to thank the more than 140 members of the House. Those are warriors. ... Where is Hillary? Where is she? > But it used to be that they’d argue with me, I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight. I’d fight, they’d fight. ... What happened to Hunter? Where’s Hunter? > Now that’s many, many times what it would take to overthrow the state. Just that one element. 400,000 ballots appeared from nowhere, right after the election. (Use of “overthrow the state.”) > Let them get out. Let the weak ones get out. This is a time for strength. ... They want to indoctrinate your children. > We did good. We got rid of the ISIS caliphate. ... In Wisconsin, corrupt Democrat run cities deployed more than 500 illegal unmanned, unsecured drop boxes, which collected a minimum of 91,000 unlawful votes. > When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules. So I hope Mike has the courage to do what he has to do. > Looking out at all the amazing patriots here today, I have never been more confident in our nation’s future. > So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give… The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. - POTUS Trump That’s only part of the stuff he said during the speech immediately before they marched, at his direction, to the Capitol building. He mentioned being peaceful once in his speech. Most of the undertones of the speech were about fighting/being strong for their way of life and belief in him being the rightful winner.