racist flip-flops
Yesterday i posted something on Facebook about how cynical you have to be as an American politician to cheer Hong Kong protestors fighting back against police brutality in their city, but call for "peace" when black protestors do the same in the United States
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My sense is that police brutality is worse too. Honestly, i don't really know for sure because this isn't my area of expertise and i haven't been able to find good numbers online, but i did look on wiki and it seems that there are at least a lot more police killings now than there were 50 years ago. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States
Of course, perhaps just more of them are recorded nowadays.
Another way to look at it might be to think about the progress made over the past 50 years in other areas and ask why that has not happened with the police. It is no longer considered acceptable for men to beat wives or parents to beat children or teachers to beat students. But people still excuse police beating suspects. And - as we have seen over the past week - even reporters, bystanders and peaceful protestors can be targeted without the police having to face any repercussions. This has been broken for a long time.
On the topic of property... Eh, perhaps i just don't see property in general as such a big deal. If the government doesn't cover the losses of small business owners whose stores were looted and burned, that is a failure of the government. And chain stores are anyway making enough money to cover a temporary interruption in one location.
To me the loss of some property can be written off as a cost of freedom. In Europe every Mayday banks are smashed and burned, it's a tradition. When people are angry, they want to lash out. Better let them punch a hole in the wall than arrest them and make them even more angry, or escalate the situation till someone is killed. My feeling is that if cops would stand down during protests and not shoot unarmed people in the face, those people would be less inclined to take out their anger on a soft target (like a store) because they wouldn't have been pushed into that feeling of absolute powerlessness in the first place.
All that said, i am not a nihilist! I definitely wouldn't want an entire city to burn down. But i don't think that's really what's happening.
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Personally, i have only been on government support once in my life, and i felt terribly guilty the whole time. I was also raised to be frugal and self-sufficient. The only time my mother ever took a loan was for a house, everything else - including cars and international moves - she saved up and paid for with cash. I took that lesson onboard and live very much within my means, even when that meant living in a basement apartment with a broken heater in the middle of winter, flooded floors, mold and so on. I don't claim any tax breaks or deductions. I don't even claim insurance if i can afford the outright cost, which usually i can. I don't like depending on anyone, whether that is banks, insurance companies or the government.
However, i also see that as a privileged position. I have had many friends who literally lived paycheck-to-paycheck, who were constantly in debt, and (in America) ended up begging family and friends for money to afford basic healthcare. For people in that kind of situation, although i gladly bail them out when i can, i think it is really the role of the government to support them. I don't want to live in a society where my friends are one paycheck away from homelessness or starvation.
Thanks for sharing your experience on how things have improved. It's reassuring to get that perspective.
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