If someone calls for protests to be illegal in one case and not the other then that’s a double standard and not such a great argument. (There are some subtle differences here, though: The situation a month ago was materially different – both in terms of the epidemiological picture as well as in terms of new scientific evidence about the relative dangers of being inside and outside – so it is possible for someone to argue for a difference on that basis, though I do acknowledge that’s a very shaky one.)
What’s happening here, though is that people judge the content of the protests: The content of the protests against the restrictions was irrational trash, so engaging in them is irresponsible stupidity. That’s a value judgement and it is perfectly valid to arrive at different conclusions with such a value judgement.
What do you think the definition of a 'double standard' is? You know, applying a different standard to the same behaviour (protests).
>Circumstances and outcomes vary, a form of 'neutrality' that ignores that fundamentally isn't a useful metric.
Sure. And it's still a double-standard. You just associate the phrase 'double-standard' as a negative and you don't like to apply something negative to behaviour you approve of.
Judge not that ye be not judged.
>Circumstances and outcomes vary, a form of 'neutrality' that ignores that fundamentally isn't a useful metric
Perhaps not useful to you and your cause.
Lots of people on the left were calling for more support from the government to handle this. EU unemployment is half of what the US is. Germany's at 3.5%. So risking yourself, for the economy didn't seem worth it especially when other nations did so much more. Lots of states started eviction moratoriums to protect people.
However, if you want to talk about double standard, where are the cosplaytriots who were sooooo concerned about their rights? Where is the groundswell of Second Amendment defenders out protecting these protests against the government like the Black Panthers did back in the 1960's?
They all bluster about standing up to the government--here is the time. So why is silence all I hear? Seems like they don't really care about those pesky rights so much, after all. And it seems like they don't really like standing up when the government might actually shoot back. Cowards.
Toward your point: I fundamentally don't respect most conservatives, much less those who think they need to protest against public health measures. So to an extent, yes, this is a lot more important than what they were complaining about.
You're conflating political stance with intelligence. Also, you need to respect everyone. That doesn't mean agree-with or follow blindly, just recognize their inherent humanity and worth. I feel like that must have been a sentiment promulgated by someone famous at some time in the past.
I don't think they are "worth less" than someone else, and I certainly know there are intellectually honest, well-meaning conservatives in the country. The line starts to blur <somewhere that I have defined> but that gets too politically specific for HN.
This is at best an extremely distorted comparison of the two messages.
40 million people are unemployed. The stakes are much larger than just getting a haircut.
In any case as a legal matter it makes no difference. Government restrictions on 1st amendment rights to assemble and protest can only survive strict scrutiny if they are viewpoint-neutral.
As soon as governors are deciding which protesters to fine/ticket based on their agreement or disagreement with the contents of their protest signs, as a matter of law the protest/gathering ban is done for. (See the recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision where justice Roberts ruled that, at the time, there wasn’t evidence that church services in California were being treated unequally with other equivalent non-religious services. When the case comes back up again with Gov Newsom’s approval of protestors marching outside, but not Christians marching in religious processions, the ban is going to fall apart in court).
Those are the signs you were shown, or chose to notice.
The other side doesn’t, so I’m much more supportive of their protest, even though there might be associated risks.
As long as I don’t call for the first protest to be made illegal this is a perfectly consistent argument.
Sometimes you have to look at the content of a protest to judge if it’s valuable or not. And it’s perfectly ok to judge a protest as not being valuable.
See how a strawman argument works?
The economic devastation wrought by the pandemic could ultimately kill more people than the virus itself: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-05-11/more-t...
With kids stuck at home, ER doctors see more severe cases: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/with-kids-stuck-at-home-er...
The Untold Toll — The Pandemic’s Effects on Patients without Covid-19: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2009984
COVID-19 Is Likely to Lead to an Increase in Suicides: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/covid-19-i...
Coronavirus could deplete Social Security as early as 'this decade': analysis: https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/coronavirus-could-deplete...
"Deaths of despair”: The deadly epidemic that predated coronavirus: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/15/21214734/deaths-of-despair-cor...
'Biblical' famines could double global hunger as a result of the coronavirus crisis, UN warns: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/04/22/coronavirus-biblical-fam...
How COVID-19 may increase domestic violence and child abuse: https://www.apa.org/topics/covid-19/domestic-violence-child-...
Millions of Credit-Card Customers Can’t Pay Their Bills. Lenders Are Bracing for Impact: https://www.wsj.com/articles/millions-of-credit-card-custome...
Now to dare dumb down the argument to being only about haircuts is, well everyone can understand what I would say, but I don't want to run afoul of the rules.
I could say: "One group is holding signs that say 'Let us reopen. I have 2 children to feed' and another group is calling for police abolition while smashing in the windows of small businesses and murdering people" and it would be just as valid of a description as yours. It's not a fair description though.
Maybe your framing is the result of not having a wide enough array of news sources.
The trivialization of other people's causes, especially those that should engender sympathy (literally 10's of millions of those in the weakest economic situations), is a 'root cause' here.
If a very serious healthcare issue is politicized, we're all in trouble.
They want to be the judges that get to determine which movement is worthwhile and which movement is not worthwhile.
The good argument is that if we care about mitigating suffering and death, we should also be looking at the suffering and death the lockdown measures lead to. Counting one side and not the other is dishonest.