4 ms·

You see what you want to see. Classic confirmation bias. I watched the livestreams, and most of the time it was a lot of running and massive amounts of tear gas

You see what you want to see. Classic confirmation bias. I watched the livestreams, and most of the time it was a lot of running and massive amounts of tear gas, and occasionally police brutally escalating violence against those protesting police violence. I think it's rather telling that you describe fireworks as mortars to try to make them sound more threatening. I haven't seen any videos where a BLM protestor beats a fallen cop with an American flag, or kills a cop. Both of which happened during the violent far-right insurrection on January 6. I have seen many more credible stories about data and studies showing that violence from far-right extremism is a much more dangerous current problem than far-left extremism. I will continue to call last year's protests what they were, remarkably peaceful world-wide protests against police brutality and for police reform. And I will call the Jan 6 event what it was, a deliberately stoked violent insurrection against the US government in an attempt to overturn the results of a democratic election, on the basis of nothing but lies and grievance. We should strive to accurately describe things as they are.

leetcrew 6y ago
I agree it's misleading here, but people (in my area at least) commonly refer to the big professional-tier fireworks as "mortars".
deleted 6y ago
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subsubzero 6y ago
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- ryandrake 6y ago
  This thread is a great example of how totally isolated news bubbles create totally different realities, each honestly and sincerely believed by their proponents. How do we get out of this?
  - rpz 6y ago
    stop consuming media, and focus attention on our own communities
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dev_by_day 6y ago
Here are a few examples of violence in portland: Molotov cocktail(fire bombs) thrown at officers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86W82Bgpq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86W82Bgpq4 Molotov cocktails thrown at court building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0 Man hits a federal officer with a hammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs Protestor knifes a black trump supporter https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/man-knifed-in-back-at-portland-protest-i-was-stabbed-for-being-a-conservative-journalist.html https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/man-knifed-in-back-...
- drunkpotato 6y ago
  You specifically went looking for instances of violence at the protests, and you found a couple. This is the very definition of confirmation bias: you have a conclusion, and then went looking for supporting instances. You didn't look for data about how much violence there was relative to other protests, or injury statistics, and you certainly didn't look at comparisons between right wing and left wing violence. You started with the conclusion you needed. You need the protests to be violent to confirm your world view, so you went looking for some instances to try and support your conclusion. However, nothing in your paltry few examples refutes anything I said. Given the vast numbers of people participating in the protests, and the length of them, they were remarkably peaceful. On the other hand, a tiny fraction of that number of right-wing violent lunatics concentrated in DC on Jan 6 and in one day committed more violence and slaughtered more law enforcement officers than at all the BLM protests combined. BLM protestors want police officers to stop killing people, the Jan 6 insurrectionists came looking to violently overturn the results of the election, and are feeling emboldened to commit more violence in the next week. I hope this helps you stop and think.
  - dev_by_day 6y ago
    FWIW I think you may have confused me with the op of this thread. I don't actually disagree that most of the BLM protestors were peaceful, as BLM did not explicitly encourage property crime and violence. Antifa however did, and the worst crimes were mostly committed by antifa members and not BLM. There is alot of odd cognitive dissonance in your comment which I appreciate proves your own point, you were presented with evidence that goes against your own world view, but instead of "stopping and thinking" you just decided to outright dismiss it instead of acknowledging it. You stated you didn't see any evidence of violent assaults on police officers in portland, yet I gave you an example of a protestor assaulting a police officer with a hammer and instead of addressing it, you resorted to projecting a false narrative of ad-hominem and assumptions of my world view which are actually incorrect. The funny thing about human biases is they actually effect us all, including you, and thank you so much for proving this. Its made my argument here easy. Hopefully you take some time to "stop and reflect" how cognitive dissonance can corrupt your own world view when your presented with evidence that goes against it.

leetcrew 6y ago

I agree it's misleading here, but people (in my area at least) commonly refer to the big professional-tier fireworks as "mortars".

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

subsubzero 6y ago

ryandrake 6y ago
This thread is a great example of how totally isolated news bubbles create totally different realities, each honestly and sincerely believed by their proponents. How do we get out of this?
- rpz 6y ago
  stop consuming media, and focus attention on our own communities
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

dev_by_day 6y ago

Here are a few examples of violence in portland: Molotov cocktail(fire bombs) thrown at officers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86W82Bgpq4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H86W82Bgpq4 Molotov cocktails thrown at court building https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMkTfGlM-f0 Man hits a federal officer with a hammer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7vlKbR3Gcs Protestor knifes a black trump supporter https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/man-knifed-in-back-at-portland-protest-i-was-stabbed-for-being-a-conservative-journalist.html https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/man-knifed-in-back-...

drunkpotato 6y ago
You specifically went looking for instances of violence at the protests, and you found a couple. This is the very definition of confirmation bias: you have a conclusion, and then went looking for supporting instances. You didn't look for data about how much violence there was relative to other protests, or injury statistics, and you certainly didn't look at comparisons between right wing and left wing violence. You started with the conclusion you needed. You need the protests to be violent to confirm your world view, so you went looking for some instances to try and support your conclusion. However, nothing in your paltry few examples refutes anything I said. Given the vast numbers of people participating in the protests, and the length of them, they were remarkably peaceful. On the other hand, a tiny fraction of that number of right-wing violent lunatics concentrated in DC on Jan 6 and in one day committed more violence and slaughtered more law enforcement officers than at all the BLM protests combined. BLM protestors want police officers to stop killing people, the Jan 6 insurrectionists came looking to violently overturn the results of the election, and are feeling emboldened to commit more violence in the next week. I hope this helps you stop and think.
- dev_by_day 6y ago
  FWIW I think you may have confused me with the op of this thread. I don't actually disagree that most of the BLM protestors were peaceful, as BLM did not explicitly encourage property crime and violence. Antifa however did, and the worst crimes were mostly committed by antifa members and not BLM. There is alot of odd cognitive dissonance in your comment which I appreciate proves your own point, you were presented with evidence that goes against your own world view, but instead of "stopping and thinking" you just decided to outright dismiss it instead of acknowledging it. You stated you didn't see any evidence of violent assaults on police officers in portland, yet I gave you an example of a protestor assaulting a police officer with a hammer and instead of addressing it, you resorted to projecting a false narrative of ad-hominem and assumptions of my world view which are actually incorrect. The funny thing about human biases is they actually effect us all, including you, and thank you so much for proving this. Its made my argument here easy. Hopefully you take some time to "stop and reflect" how cognitive dissonance can corrupt your own world view when your presented with evidence that goes against it.