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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

> and then you lash out?

As an Army guy with a family embarking on his fifth overseas deployment spontaneous bursts of rage are frowned upon. I don’t do that. I have gotten comfortable to sparse, tiny, lonely living conditions and learned to regulate my mental health according to the expectations at hand.

> the progress just isn't quick enough

I suspect the majority of people engaging in riots, and possibly the protests as well, have provided little to no participation of any kind towards these social concerns before two weeks ago, and if that is true the speed of progress is irrelevant.

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No, I'm going to have to lean harder on this question: you're a military man, in the US Army, who's been deployed overseas, and you can't recognise insurgency/counterinsurgency when you see it? I mean, I'm just following along at home and that's clearly what the situation is and also why the police are losing for exactly the same reasons as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Because they're making the same mistakes.

The thing about counterinsurgency is that shooting insurgents makes more insurgents. Especially the indiscriminate use of "non lethal" rounds to cause severe and permanent injuries: shooting people, including reporters and medics, in the face with rubber bullets. Every act of filmed violence (e.g. https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1268759072876224514 ) makes the situation worse.

And the two feed off each other. The overseas wars return to domestic strife. A historical example: https://twitter.com/BeijingPalmer/status/1267539424549769219

From a military perspective I would be hard pressed to recognize my fellow citizen peaceful protesters as enemy combatants. Those that are not peaceful (actively destructive) are petty criminals and still not enemy combatants.

According to the definitions though it is not an insurgency. An insurgency is violent opposed to a non-violent rebellion. Most peaceful protesters appear to disavow violent rioters.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency

So you missed the entire point of their reply.

> Because they're making the same mistakes.

I suspect their point was that quoted line. I didn’t miss it so much as I just didn’t comment on it when the rest of the comment is just such nonsense.

When I read about your overseas deployment, something goes off in my chest - about which country you're going to be deployed to and what horrors await the people there. It is not about you, but about the historical imperialism America has been perpetrating over rest of the world, starting in 1899 with the Philippines.

And I've read enough history to wonder why and how the black population has suffered so much injustice for so long. You ask "why now" and you question their motives. But the only explanation I could come up with - for why they suffered in silence for the last few decades - was that the enemy was too formidable. Yet there is a breaking point, and George Floyd probably was it. I'm not hopeful that there will be any change though. On the contrary the American system will make black people pay, in a long, insidious, and institutional manner.

I never questioned anyone’s motives.

> It is not about you, but about the historical imperialism America

This host nation invited American presence as a partner.

Of course the riots are just a symptom. And of course a lot of people of in those riots are not there for the cause.

Would there be riots right now had Floyd not been killed? Have you even seen a riot started out of nothing? Just for fun?

I doesn't change the original point that if a politician's first goal is to stop the riots, it's only to cover a symptom while the real problem is not fixed. And it's a matter of time before everything starts over again.

> Have you even seen a riot started out of nothing? Just for fun?

It's a pretty well-known phenomenon. You hold a sports riot when your team wins, not when it loses.

I don't think that's a safe statement to make. See Vancouver in 2011 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_rio...).

It's pretty clear that the instigators planned to try to start a riot either way.

Then the team losing is what started the riot. I never said the reason had to be worth rioting for. I only said that riots start from somewhere.

Did you read my comment as if it said the opposite of what it actually says?

In Northern Ireland it's known as "recreational rioting!"

> As an Army guy with a family embarking on his fifth overseas deployment

Seen any riots in Iraq? What did you think the Arab Spring was?

(Conversely I suspect the people in the protests are almost certainly all politically engaged and at least vote. The previous political engagement of BLM has not achieved anywhere near the same results as the protests have. The protests appear to be the only way to get police charged for murder even when there is clear video evidence.)

Having been there I can honestly tell you it isn’t the same. The conditions are very different. No matter how bad things get in the US there is still a very large gap between US conditions and those that would drive people to self-immolation.

Relative deprivation will do the trick. Double the prices of essential goods in the US overnight, and watch how fast a revolt forms, and what violence it will resort to if it meets resistance. Nevermind that everyone here'd still be very well-off by global standards—they'll hang the politician who doesn't give in to their demands, anyway.

Sure, and if a meteor crushes the capitol while Yellowstone violently explodes in apocalyptic volcanic doom all while running out of toilet paper again due to Covid I suspect people will be upset. I don’t envision the hanging of any politicians though.

I think one difference might be that, before now, self-immolation wouldn't have earned any positive attention in the US, while it might have more cultural significance as protest elsewhere. There might have been people in the US who would have self-immolated if they thought it would make a difference.

Your argument is basically since you were not aware of what others in society were doing, they must not have been doing it?

Do you see how superficial this appears?

In case you didn't know, BLM has been around for a long time and NAACP has been around even longer. The issue of systemic violence against minorities has also been an issue in the American social scene for at least the last 100 years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23427232

People are coalescing into groups more so for non cognitive behaviors than for deliberate premeditated concerns but when confronted by that reasoning deflect. When confronted they don’t deny it or excuse it but instead argue defense of positions that were never in question.

> Do you see how superficial this appears?

Good. That is my point. If you find the subjects that people are protesting about concerning and important you should very much care whether outside observers see something sincere or superficial.

The rest of your comment I agree with 100% and have been repeating this numerous times without directly specifying organizations by name.

Your mental framing is different than the average person.

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