People who storm government buildings are not protesters:
BAGHDAD — Supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced their withdrawal from Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone on Sunday, packing up and leaving just a day after they stormed parliament and began a sit-in.
Addressing the demonstrators, Akhlas al-Obaidi, a protest organizer, urged people to go home to give political decision-making a chance and to commemorate the death of 8th-century Imam Mousa al-Kadhim. She said they would return Friday to make a “major stand.â€
Earlier in the day, the demonstrators had picnicked and chanted against politicians they deemed corrupt, while also enjoying what was for some their first sight of Baghdad’s most iconic landmarks. The Green Zone is home to parliament, ministries and embassies and has been sealed off by blast walls and checkpoints for 13 years.
People who storm a convention center are not demonstrators
Burlingame, California (CNN)Hundreds of demonstrators descended on the California Republican Convention Friday to protest Donald Trump ahead of his speech.
Protesters — some of whom wore bandanas over their faces and carried Mexican flags — blocked off the road in front of the Hyatt Regency here, forcing the GOP front-runner’s motorcade to pull over along a concrete median outside the hotel’s back entrance. Trump and his entourage got out and walked into the building.
They are rioters. There may be some justification for it in an undemocratic country but in a democratic one it’s the behavior of tyrants or at least wannabes.
When they claim a right to violate the rights of others on the basis of the strength of their feelings, I don’t know what to think. At the very least they’re not clear on the concept of Gandhian resistance. Maybe they’re indifferent to it.
I am mostly inclined to agree with you, but I do wonder when you cross the line into being a chump. When the game is so rigged against you that playing by the rules just guarantees that you continue to lose. That those in charge have set up the rules so that you can’t win, so they don’t need to change.
Steve
Abraham Lincoln would approve of this message. I don’t know if he would for high-minded reasons — veneration of the rule of law and the needful persistence in support of democratic institutions, or because tactically, one doesn’t allow one’s positions to be tarred with the criminality of those that might be made to appear as fellow travelers. The need for rejection is the same.
PD- You are a better Lincoln scholar than I. Did he approve of the American Revolution and what was done by the various actors?
Steve
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
I don’t see much similarity between that and the rioters. And they were facing a monarchy for goodness sake.
These idiots might as well be paid by Trump. How dumb do you have to be to think this is a clever approach. Protest by denying someone else the right to speak? Cognitive dissonance much?
Actually, that’s not the worst of it. The express displays of Mexican nationalism that have become part of these so-called protests along with the national media’s reluctance to cover them let alone denounce them provides evidence he’s right.
Dave– You defend the rioters. What did the British think? A monarchy? Yup, what other form of government existed? Anyway, I was thinking more of Baghdad. The Green Zone has been walled off and only some people are allowed in. Only those with the correct ethnic, political and religious beliefs, or in the government. In effect, the common people are being kept out. They are not allowed to participate in their governance. How long should they put up with that? A sit in is really that awful in response?
In the case of the colonists, should they have contributed more towards paying for the Seven Years War? Was the proper way to handle this the Tea Party? Should they have precipitated the Boston Massacre?
As to the demonstrators at the Trump rally, I don’t think they help their cause. Peaceful resistance, ala Gandhi, something like a sit in, might be appropriate, but you already claim that is rioting. Just FTR I think they would have been fine staying on public property and peacefully blockading the streets. Police should ask them to move and when they didn’t they would be arrested and removed. They cross the line when they destroy property and harm others. If you want to call that rioting I would agree.
Anyway, I think minorities are overreacting to Trump’s trying to dehumanize them and blame them for America’s troubles. It has been at least 30 years since the Chicago police tortured minorities, so they are safe now.
Steve
@steve, Lincoln thought that that resorted to mob violence, including abolitionists, were the ones opposing the American Revolution. They sought to destroy the institutions of self-government that the Revolution created.
“Stand with anybody that stands RIGHT. Stand with him while he is right and PART with him when he goes wrong. Stand WITH the abolitionist in restoring the Missouri Compromise; and stand AGAINST him when he attempts to repeal the fugitive slave law. In the latter case you stand with the southern disunionist. What of that? you are still right. In both cases you are right. In both cases you oppose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand on middle ground and hold the ship level and steady. In both you are national and nothing less than national. This is good old whig ground. To desert such ground, because of any company, is to be less than a whig—less than a man—less than an American.”
Lincoln thought that THEY that resorted to mob violence, including abolitionists, were the ones opposing the American Revolution. They sought to destroy the institutions of self-government that the Revolution created.
And the Tea Party? He opposed that? Did he think we were wrong to fight to achieve independence?
Steve
Well, we’ve gotten the centrist reaction that bringing corruption to a halt is rioting and the erroneous liberal reaction that blocking a road violates right to speech. Anyone else?
@steve, the difference is that the tea-party fought for representative government, these people are violently opposed to it.
Ben:
What corruption was brought to a halt?
You know, we “centrists” have been taking it easy on the Bernie people. We don’t dislike them, and we’ll need them, so everyone is laying off Bernie. But Bernie’s platform is bullshit, and you undoubtedly know it. And let me dispense with one thing: there is nothing idealistic about Bernie and his followers. Bernie wants to take money from taxpayers and give it to college kids. College kids are an interest group. He is buying off a special interest with tax money, which is pretty much what every other pol does.
Further, he has done a wonderful job of disproving his core thesis. The best-financed candidate is the one who does NOT take corporate money, and the guy who was the avatar of big money was a guy named Jeb!
In this country we believe in free speech. Free speech for everyone, even despicable pigs like Trump. And since you are not a stupid man, Ben, you know full well that these aggressive shut-him-down protests are doing nothing but helping Trump.
Only those with the correct ethnic, political and religious beliefs, or in the government. In effect, the common people are being kept out. They are not allowed to participate in their governance.
Sounds like the US Capital Building.
PD-Really? In the case of Iraq, those people were not being represented in government. How long do they sit back and take that? A sit in is a riot?
As to the Trump protestors, it sounds like the large majority are peaceful, but some of the younger kids are going wild. I think we would both agree that the ones being violent, and to date no one has been reported as seriously hurt, should be prosecuted and jailed. However, those quietly forming blockades are looking for representation. The non-elites in the GOP have decided that Trump is going to represent them, but he is doing this by blaming Mexicans and other minorities for their troubles. Who is representing those minorities? The left to some extent, but not very well, and to be honest i am not exactly how politicians on the right are supposed to oppose the scapegoating message. Anyway, if michael is correct that we have seen before what happens when demonstrations against an angry, crazy leader get out of hand, we have also seen before what happens when an angry, crazy leader who is blaming the country’s problems on a specific ethnic or religious group gets in power. We have seen that many times. In a country where VP candidates openly advocate for “2nd Amendment remedies” to our problems, how worried should those minorities be? You and I are pretty safe, but should they feel that way?
Steve