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I'm starting a new top-level regarding trigger happy Iceman meets wine mom in Minneapolis because, rather than debating the videos, I'd like to focus more on a compare and contrast to get a true culture war angle. People have made an analogy to the woman who died on Jan 6th but I don't think it lands strongly enough. Permit me to cut closer to the bone, friends.
The only fatality on Jan 6th was an unarmed woman being shot by a federal agent[1] because she was opposing what she considered an illegitimate government action. Liberals tearlessly argued this is what happens when you Fuck Around while conservatives argued she was righteously Resisting (TM).
Today the players are the same but the jerseys are flipped. Liberals cry with so, so many tears of empathy for the dead woman in the car while conservatives argue they were obstructing a legitimate state function and put the officer in danger and this is what happens when you Fuck Around.
In broad strokes it's clear neither side cares about democracy or rule of law per se. Conservative faith in rule of law evaporates when it says no to Trump and liberal empathy for the scrappy civil disobedients dries up when it's a Chud. Both sides are happy with mob violence when it's their side doing it and cry tyranny whenever they Find Out.
Both were fine, if not justified (the latter as the narrower question).
In general, people overestimate the risk of tyranny and underestimate the risk of anarchy.
How many truly tyrannical, totalitarian states are there in the world? North Korea, obviously. Eritrea, to some extent. After that the lines get a lot more blurred. You certainly wouldn’t want to be a dissident in Iran or China, but the vast majority of the population is not really ‘enslaved by the state’ (or ‘under constant, totalitarian absolute surveillance with extreme penalties for the tiniest stepping out of line’) the way that people are in a true tyranny.
Even across the 20th century, true tyranny was rare. Neither the Gestapo nor the KGB were capable of it, for example, nor was any CCP domestic intelligence agency, certainly until very recently. In fact, the only major Marxist nation that was truly, terrifyingly totalitarian in the 1984 sense was East Germany.
By contrast, how many ungovernable shitholes are there in the world in which criminals, gangs and others run riot, with the central government hopelessly weak, corrupt or otherwise powerless to stop them? Many, many more. Half of the Sahel, Haiti and a large chunk of Central America, Papua New Guinea, big parts of Somalia and Northern Kenya, large parts of Nigeria and Niger, parts of Syria etc.
We should be much more concerned about anarchy than tyranny.
Your point of view is consistently that of a wealthy, entitled person who sees the police as her personal gendarmarie whose job it is to keep the riff-raff from inconveniencing her life in any way. From that point of view, yes, anarchy is a much greater threat than tyranny, because tyranny will mostly leave you alone, while anarchy threatens you. Not to get all "woke" (har) but this is exactly why "privilege" dialog took root. There was originally a legitimate point to it. You consider the lower classes to be undesirables to be kept away from you, and the only thing you fear is revolting peasants. So nearly any level of state crackdown is acceptable to you because only at North Korean levels would it actually threaten your lifestyle. Whereas those beneath you understand what tyranny will do to them.
From a Conflict Theory perspective, there is no reason you should care about this, or people who are not you, as long as your side maintains the levers of power. But "Let them eat
cakeboot" does have the potential to redound on you. Traditionally, rich people had some concern about oppression either out of genuine (liberal) conviction or self-preservation.While you're not incorrect, for the low-level peasant the roving gangs are more dangerous. Big Warlord in the distant city can send his tax collectors round to seize your crops or pressgang your sons, but that's only every so often, like a bad harvest or a plague. It's part of life that bad things happen.
Unrelated gangs of thieves and small local chieftains who sweep through on an unpredictable schedule, and may happen several times in a row, are much more dangerous since they have no interest in leaving you anything until the next time. This is why people may and do prefer the Strongman who cracks down on the roving bands and then levies his tithes. It's why people could be nostalgic for Stalin or the hey-day of the USSR etc.
I'm not in any way endorsing anarchy. On the oppression-anarchy spectrum I'd be closer to @2rafa's POV than the typical DSA or antifa or what-have-you activist (and they would consider me as fascist as her). I agree that at a certain level of anarchy, it's better to have a brutal warlord who at least keeps the bandits at bay than a hellscape of marauding gangs.
That said, tyranny is bad too, and the Warlord's friends telling me life is better under the Warlord's absolute rule is not going to be very convincing.
Tyranny is bad, but the argument of my comment was to suggest that - right now - the long term political consequences of mass immigration (a lower trust, poorer, more violent, more unequal and more corrupt country) outweigh the risks that this almost certainly accidental death is a sure sign of descent into tyranny. I also just replied to wandererinthewilderness in this same thread, apologies for not tagging you.
I apologize for going in on you so hard. Against my initial, wiser judgment, I have found myself invested in this ridiculous case, and the more I am assailed by what I perceive to be low-effort culture warring bombs thrown by rightists and leftists alike (I genuinely do consider both sides at this point-at least at the edges of the argument-to be bad faith, dishonest, and actively destructive to this country), the more disgusted I am. For some reason that manifested in my response to your post, which I really did perceive to be kind of dismissive of the brutality of the police and the state wielded against its "enemies." While I do think you are frequently oblivious (or at least, indifferent) to people outside your social class, it was unfair of me to accuse you of being pro-tyranny.
If it's any consolation, you've had the best takes on it of anyone on this site by far
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