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I'm fascinated by the liberal insistence on "nonviolent protests" and this vision of dissidence as something that shouldn't make people uncomfortable. The basic belief seems to be that you can challenge the state but you can't, ever, challenge the state monopoly on violence.
I wonder if this is about liberalism being so tied to self-definitions of "good" whiteness. Because ultimately, white liberals must know or recognize that the state uses violence specifically to protect whiteness. That's what these protests are about, after all.
"Challenge the laws but never challenge the people who are sworn to uphold those laws" seems an odd, hypocritical stance. The police are the practical application of the law. If a system's bad, it's bad. You can't have bad laws/oversight and good police at the same time.
Anyway as I said it's really intriguing to see how far liberals will go to insist that change can happen without making anyone, in any way, uncomfortable. It's obviously ahistorical; America itself wouldn't exist without a violent uprising as its birth.
I think "The West Wing" and its vision of defanged, dinner-party politics and white saviors really fried the brains of an entire generation of voters and political workers.
Politics is filthy stuff. It always has been. It's more House of Cards than The West Wing. Murders and betrayals and sex scandals and surveillance. Politics churns up the worst of human impulses, because power itself does. Liberals wanted it sanitized, I guess.
The problem with this view of politics as some sort of immaculate religious ritual is that we are now stuck with a whole group of white liberals -- your friends in the hashtag-Resistance -- who have no idea what to do with someone like Trump, who is totally filthy.
This all goes back to the old meme/trope about liberals playing by the rules while Republicans are overturning the chessboard. But the whole "let's keep politics at arms' length while doing politics" thing in the hashtag-Resistance is a total failure, at minimum.
At the maximum, it's a complicity with white-protective systems of government. White liberals do not really want to change the status quo, because it has usually gone their way for the past 70 years. So, "peaceful" protest, a click of the tongue, mild disapproval, just entre nous
The challenge all along has been that white liberals fought police brutality objections with "the police are here to protect us" and that's true -- they are there to protect white people. So the police, ultimately, cannot be challenged in their eyes. That's their paramilitary.
I think this is also why ultimately, white liberals are already signalling their retreat from the B L M movement with thinkpieces about "peaceful protest" and "looting." They're realigning with the violent, state-backed protection of whiteness.
I think the biggest frustrating thing is that liberals are not seeing politics for what it is. It's dirty stuff. A lot of them really bought into that Kennedy, Camelot myth (even though at the time it was running on software of sex scandals and alleged Mafia involvement.)
I think it would be more helpful if liberals understood that the essential nature of politics and holding office is more like Boss Tweed than (the fake, created image of) Jack Kennedy.
It's so funny when liberals talk about the Republican Party losing its way. What? Republicans are playing politics the way it's always been played. Propaganda, bribery, double-dealing. It's liberals who think this nation is going to be run by Care Bears.
I guess where I'm going with this is that Aaron Sorkin sucks and it's genuinely incredible that he created a vision of white liberal purity that has captured so many white people as essentially, their state religion.
If you like the West Wing, keep that shit to yourself, it's embarrassing.
Memes aside, it's really a problem how the white liberal vision of moral purity that Sorkin created allows for the performance of empathy for minorities -- again, "good" white folks -- but continually denies them anything that would actually help, such as healthcare or housing.
This is also why it's great that Kennedy lost in Massachusetts. It turns out that the Camelot myth of pure politics isn't as persistently convincing as all these white liberal politicos thought. (Some) people want *actual( change on climate, health, finance and housing.
Also, there's no such thing as a "peaceful protest" if the protesters are nonviolent but the police are out there harming people with tear gas, rubber bullets, and batons. The state is still enacting violence even if protesters aren't.
Annnnnyyywaaaay, SUPER hoping that liberals get their stuff together and understand that this current state of fascism is not the thing you can work out at dinner parties and tweets and with cute lil "pussy hats." You can't roll over and show your belly to a fascist.
It's just hilarious that white liberals get on this website every day and say things that suggest that violence is not an intrinsic part of the political process and always has been. Have you all been reading the news? https://twitter.com/igd_news/status/1301773713185091584
This thread brought to you by this on how protests have been "nonviolent" even though dozens of people have been maimed, hurt or killed by police forces for protesting.
"Peaceful protests work!" liberals will yell over other people's hospital beds. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-united-states-is-in-crisis-report-tracks-thousands-of-summer-protests-most-nonviolent/2020/09/03/b43c359a-edec-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html
"Peaceful protests work!" liberals will yell over other people's hospital beds. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-united-states-is-in-crisis-report-tracks-thousands-of-summer-protests-most-nonviolent/2020/09/03/b43c359a-edec-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html
Weird coincidence that protesters keep dying around the police. What are the chances. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1301724826411970566
