Left-wing 'thought'
This provides a nice microcosm of left-wing 'thought'.
The world is divided into Victims and OppressorsOver-simplistic Manichean viewpoint, of course. Meant lots of doublethink, particularly in the '80s when it wasn't clear whether Isreal or Muslims were getting the worse deal - now we all know that the "Zionists" are Oppressors and not Victims ( Read more... )
The world is divided into Victims and OppressorsOver-simplistic Manichean viewpoint, of course. Meant lots of doublethink, particularly in the '80s when it wasn't clear whether Isreal or Muslims were getting the worse deal - now we all know that the "Zionists" are Oppressors and not Victims ( Read more... )
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Earlier that day, someone I follow on Twitter (Daniel Hannan MEP) pointed me at a rant in the Guardian by George Monbiot in which he pretty much suggests that anyone who disagrees with him in the Guardian comments pages is doing so because they're paid to by big corporations. (I wish - I'm doing it pro bono...)
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1) 'if you don't want to be attacked by police, you shouldn't go on a protest' - do you actually believe this statement or was it hyperbole / based on context? How should the populace react / display their displeasure when the government is doing something they think is unacceptable, doesn't appear to be responding to letters and petitions, and isn't up for election for several years?
2) I am assuming your politics are right-wing and also that one of the features of this is that you put a higher value on damage to property compared to direct damage to people than a left-wing point of view would - is this a fair assumption?
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1) Can you name six policies that have been abandoned / reversed / affected at all by street protests? If not, then presumably the answer to 'How should the populace react / display their displeasure' is 'some way that actually has an effect'?
2) I think the point is more that there is a difference between different instances of damage to people. There's damage to people who are just wandering past and happen to get caught up in violence caused by troublemakers; there's damage to those trying to keep the peace, ie the police, in the face of such troublemakers; and there's damage to the troublemakers themselves.
I can't speak for the article's writer, but I at least find it hard to have sympathy for someone who goes out of their way to find trouble (and we're not just talking 'going on a protest' here, we're talking 'going on a protest and being one of the most aggressive confrontation-catalysts there') and then gets hurt.
The question I would ask was: that ought the police to have done? There was a man, in a ( ... )
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Same problem the police/prisons had with cell toilets, actually, but the solution there - unbreakable, unmovable one-piece steel or concrete toilets - isn't really possible for temporary facilities.
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I also note the constant refrain that we have 'video evidence' of the 'brutality'. But the thing the video evidence lacks -- as usual -- is context (just like, say, the famous General Loan picture). What happened immediately before the video begins, or after it ends?
Indeed, what happens during the incident itself? Grainy and distant as it is, it's not entirely clear he didn't fling himself out of the wheelchair. What possible motive he might have for doing that is left as an exercise for the reader.
I think the basic principle is: in this country, we assume someone whiter than the driven until they are proved guilty. Unless they are a police officer, of course, in which case the presumption is that they are 'brutal'; and the shouted word of a self-proclaimed 'revolutionary' always trumps the dignified silence of the police.S
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As a fellow robhu ban-ee (whoops, like many losers of arguments on the net, he's zapped the post: time to put up my copy) I agree that he's rather handy with the ban-hammer. He rightly says that his blog is his own space, however, his touchiness makes it a useless space for discussion: disagree in the wrong way, and you're gone. We should start a support group for people he's banned, there are enough of us now :-)
However, I'm not convinced this is symptomatic of the left, rather, it is a symptom of the fact that politics is the mind-killer.
Your own response is also an instance of the same: it's clear from the video that the police have a case against them to answer, in that their use of force should be proportionate to the threat. This is hardly a "leftist" opinion, in fact, you could frame it in libertarian terms about the monopoly on the use of force and so on.
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There are definitely questions to be answered by the police, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it a case. The commanders should be asking the officers involved why they did what they did and whether it was justified - and I'd expect that it probably wouldn't go any further than that. Though, obviously, it'll depend on their answers!
Politics is a pain in general, but I do see (and others have noted) a tendency for the left to prefer silencing opposition to debate. It perhaps goes with the demographics - it takes supreme confidence/arrogance to think that you can run someone's life better than they can themselves, and that would tend to militate against compromise and acceptance.
I find the ban more amusing than anything else.
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I suspect which set of sites you are more likely to get banned from figures highly in whihc one seems to prefer silencing opposition to debate :).
(Also, the right seem to have made a better go of silencing wider opposition by taking over the traditional media ;) )
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Newspaperwise, there's admittedly only one broadsheet any more and it's Tory, but if we allow the Guardian and the Indy too count, that's two leftie to one righty. I don't know much about tabloids, but I assume the Mirror is still left wing?
Where's this 'taking over', then?
S.
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