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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   790 thread views

Transnational Thursday for June 4, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Then you’ve got the actual politicians, who in theory have skin in the game. Elected officials are incentivized to call for calm, procedural responses no matter what. The killer is in custody, the facts are out there, but Belfast still has some unburned trash cans and they’d like to keep it that way. It is rational to make milquetoast calls for public order. It is their job.

Does that apply to Democrats during the manufactured George Floyd scandal?

I wouldn’t call it manufactured, per se. But yes, of course it applies.

Are you arguing that this is how Democrat politicians were actually behaving back then? I won't say the death itself was manufactured. The scandal, on the other hand, very much was, I think.

More or less.

It’s easy to find examples of officials doing the responsible thing.

It’s also easy to find people who danced around the violence while endorsing the sentiment. Notice how those take @FtttG’s suggested response: “we pledge to do all we can to fix the problem.”

The incentives are to call for reform, insist that you’re working to solve the problem, and downplay any violence. Only the most radical politicians flirted with endorsing the riots.

Amusing typo: "non-violet activism".

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