> There's a respect given to white right-wing protestors carrying your own weapons, both by police and many people that isn't extended to the BLM protests.
The tactic of openly carrying firearms during protest marches was pioneered by the Black Panthers and there have, in fact, been a number of predominantly black and pro-BLM open carry marches since the killing of George Floyd. There was one over the weekend in Oklahoma.
> Your solution is to further escalate to requesting military intervention.
This is a straw man. To reiterate, my position is that Sen. Cotton’s proposal of invoking the Insurrection Act was a premature but understandable suggestion. I disagree with it but especially given the precedent of the exact same measures being taken during the 1992 Rodney King riots, it wasn’t an unconscionable suggestion and it was perfectly reasonable for the NYT to publish it.
In other words, my position is that it’s justifiable for the NYT to publish an oped neither of us agree with. Your position is that arson is a legitimate form of political protest.
> Your position is that it’s justifiable for people to burn down private businesses.
I'm unsure in what sense you mean justifiable. If you mean "rationally explainable from a set of observations" then yes. If you mean "morally justifiable", I don't believe I've made any claim to that effect, and once more I'd ask that you examine what led you to believe such a thing.
I previously responded to this at length, but I think we're leaning into territory that dang would prefer we not. So I'll leave it at that, with two final requests:
First that you take some time to actually listen to the protestors and their complaints. Second, that you look into the use of the Insurrection Act in the US, and ask yourself why since 1965 five of the six times it was invoked were to put down civil rights protests.
> First that you take some time to actually listen to the protestors and their complaints.
I have. Please examine your assumption that I haven't.
However, I'm not the one conflating the protesters with the people committing violent acts. The evidence I've seen appears to indicate that most of the violence has not been carried out by protesters, but rather from a variety of extremists who are trying to exploit their cause. I've seen groups of protesters forming perimeters to guard riot police who got separated from their formations, or seizing vandals and instigators and physically shoving them into the police lines so they can be removed from an otherwise peaceful protest.
Maybe you didn't know that. Maybe you thought the rioting and violence was all at the hands of BLM protesters. You definitely didn't seem to know the history of demonstrators openly carrying rifles. But that all leaves you in a very poor position to be misrepresenting my own statements to me directly and asking me to educate myself about things I'm better informed on than you seem to be.
I know literally every thing you've stated. The question I'm asking is not whether we know those things, but if you honestly believe, after having read Tom Cotton's op Ed, that his preference is for the national guard to go in and work with protestors to help control violent groups, or if instead his goal was to quell legitimate protests.
You are repeatedly asserting the opposite: that "riots are the language of the unheard" (rather than, rioters are bad actors using otherwise legitimate protests as cover), that open-carry protests are something only white people do, and so forth.
> The question I'm asking is not whether we know those things, but if you honestly believe, after having read Tom Cotton's op Ed, that his preference is for the national guard to go in and work with protestors to help control violent groups, or if instead his goal was to quell legitimate protests.
The tactic of openly carrying firearms during protest marches was pioneered by the Black Panthers and there have, in fact, been a number of predominantly black and pro-BLM open carry marches since the killing of George Floyd. There was one over the weekend in Oklahoma.
> Your solution is to further escalate to requesting military intervention.
This is a straw man. To reiterate, my position is that Sen. Cotton’s proposal of invoking the Insurrection Act was a premature but understandable suggestion. I disagree with it but especially given the precedent of the exact same measures being taken during the 1992 Rodney King riots, it wasn’t an unconscionable suggestion and it was perfectly reasonable for the NYT to publish it.
In other words, my position is that it’s justifiable for the NYT to publish an oped neither of us agree with. Your position is that arson is a legitimate form of political protest.