Tuesday lunch break
Walked this morning, everything felt fine footwise, wished I'd gone running instead, but will do so tomorrow morning.
Getting back into work stuff -- seems no emergencies happened during my day off.
B is coming over tonight, so I'll get some socializing beyond the quickie with Lawyer David last night.
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My nephew is concerned about how protesting college students are being treated around the US, including at his own campus, where dozens were arrested recently. He texted me when he learned that tear gas was being used on one campus. I have complex feelings about protest. We live in a country where freedom of speech is often respected, but this doesn't mean every kind of protest you engage in is legal. For example, students occupying an administrative building is clearly not legal. Breaking windows is not legal. Setting up a group demonstration can be legal, but you usually need to apply for a permit ahead of time and specify the place, number of people, and time frame. If you sit down in the middle of the street to block traffic, that's not legal. If you put up a tent city on private property without permission, that's not legal.
If you want to engage in civil disobedience, which is intentionally breaking the law to make a point, then you should not be surprised or shocked when you are then arrested for breaking the law. The point should be to get arrested, to force the state to expend time and money on your protest, to gain publicity for your protest. Make them imprison you. So, when people complain about the police arresting protesters, I feel like everybody is just doing their jobs -- the protesters are intentionally breaking the law, the police are enforcing the law.
But in general I'm sympathetic with people who protest on behalf of the underdog. But I also wonder how effective protest is. For example, I look at the US involvement in the Vietnam War, which lasted roughly 20 years. The 1960s are often remembered as a time of protest in the US, with people protesting racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War. Yet did all those protests accomplish anything, or was it electoral politics that led to advances regarding racism & sexism and the US withdrawal from Vietnam? After both LBJ and Nixon's presidencies failed, finally Ford oversaw the final US withdrawal, but this was after several years of protests.
There are the occasional events that drive a media frenzy to suddenly care about something that people had been protesting. Such as the sudden global outpouring of concern about police violence against black people in the US after George Floyd was killed on video. But again ... did all this protest accomplish anything? I don't think the rate of police violence has budged since then.
So I feel protest is one of those things you have a right to do, but I'm not sure it really matters. I think freedom of speech is important, but most individual acts of free speech are going to be drowned out by all the other speech and noise and distraction and so forth. It's like the noise is the point of free speech, letting everybody make noise instead of bottling up all the noise.
Getting back into work stuff -- seems no emergencies happened during my day off.
B is coming over tonight, so I'll get some socializing beyond the quickie with Lawyer David last night.
-----
My nephew is concerned about how protesting college students are being treated around the US, including at his own campus, where dozens were arrested recently. He texted me when he learned that tear gas was being used on one campus. I have complex feelings about protest. We live in a country where freedom of speech is often respected, but this doesn't mean every kind of protest you engage in is legal. For example, students occupying an administrative building is clearly not legal. Breaking windows is not legal. Setting up a group demonstration can be legal, but you usually need to apply for a permit ahead of time and specify the place, number of people, and time frame. If you sit down in the middle of the street to block traffic, that's not legal. If you put up a tent city on private property without permission, that's not legal.
If you want to engage in civil disobedience, which is intentionally breaking the law to make a point, then you should not be surprised or shocked when you are then arrested for breaking the law. The point should be to get arrested, to force the state to expend time and money on your protest, to gain publicity for your protest. Make them imprison you. So, when people complain about the police arresting protesters, I feel like everybody is just doing their jobs -- the protesters are intentionally breaking the law, the police are enforcing the law.
But in general I'm sympathetic with people who protest on behalf of the underdog. But I also wonder how effective protest is. For example, I look at the US involvement in the Vietnam War, which lasted roughly 20 years. The 1960s are often remembered as a time of protest in the US, with people protesting racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War. Yet did all those protests accomplish anything, or was it electoral politics that led to advances regarding racism & sexism and the US withdrawal from Vietnam? After both LBJ and Nixon's presidencies failed, finally Ford oversaw the final US withdrawal, but this was after several years of protests.
There are the occasional events that drive a media frenzy to suddenly care about something that people had been protesting. Such as the sudden global outpouring of concern about police violence against black people in the US after George Floyd was killed on video. But again ... did all this protest accomplish anything? I don't think the rate of police violence has budged since then.
So I feel protest is one of those things you have a right to do, but I'm not sure it really matters. I think freedom of speech is important, but most individual acts of free speech are going to be drowned out by all the other speech and noise and distraction and so forth. It's like the noise is the point of free speech, letting everybody make noise instead of bottling up all the noise.