Unidentified Federal Law Enforcement Detaining Protestors Without Explanation | Hacker News Reader

Unidentified Federal Law Enforcement Detaining Protestors Without Explanation

opb.org

77 pointsgrowlix97 comments

Why was this flagged? There's another thread of this exact same article on the front page at the moment, too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866926

Because the headline is nonsense. The cops are not 'unidentified', they are clearly identified as federal law enforcement and they are arresting people who they believe have broken the law. They are not kidnapping random people off the street.

I didn’t see the men identify themselves in the video. Did you? Seems pretty clear cut definition of “unidentified” to not say who you are or what organization you’re with.

It's on their uniforms

Where is the clear identification?

On the uniforms

The article says multiple times "They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them."

Because this is a forum made up of primarily right wing users.

That's a common misperception. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23807579. There is a lot more where that came from.

People make generalizations about HN based on what they see, but they see what they notice and are far more likely to notice what they dislike and weight it more heavily (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Basically that means your image of HN is likely to fill out as an inverse image of your own views. In other words, HN will seem to be full of your enemies. That explains why the other side sees the forum as being made up of their enemies.

Everyone here needs to accept—because it's reality—that the forum is simply divided on divisive topics. It's divided roughly the way that society at large is divided in the many countries whose citizens participate here. No doubt there is some skew (because of factors like education and class), but with the exception of a small number of issues like, say, software patents, it's likely not a major skew. Perceptions of major skew on HN are overwhelmingly rooted in cognitive bias, which explains why they're so contradictory and all over the place.

One reason this is so important is that when someone perceives HN as being dominated by enemies, they are much more likely to go into battle mode. If instead you perceive it as being a more-or-less representative sample of the world, that's still rough—the world is not as we would like it to be—but there's at least a greater possibility of openness. I wrote more about this here, if anyone's interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

I wrote out a longer post, but decided to delete it because it wasn't as charitable as I wanted it to be. Simply put I disagree. What is considered to be divisive is also political.

Sure, divisive topics are political, almost by definition. No argument there.

This point is a factual one though. People's perceptions of skew on HN are massively distorted by cognitive bias, and that includes your perceptions if you think that HN is "made up of primarily right wing users".

Please don't underestimate this phenomenon. It's probably the most significant one that I observe here and it's incredible how reliable it is.

For example: you're reacting to two police-related submissions getting flagged and seeing that as a sign of right-wing users dominating the site. (Actually, I can tell you for certain that some of the users flagging these are left-wing users who must have other reasons for flagging it.) Meanwhile you're not counting the many major threads that HN has had about police brutality in the last couple months. There was one yesterday, in fact: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23860829.

If you look at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23624962, you'll find an analysis I did a few weeks ago showing how George Floyd-related topics, including police brutality, were by far the most-discussed topics on HN in the previous month. That's a fact—and yet it doesn't stop people from claiming, not just that the topics are underrepresented (which would already be completely mistaken) but that they are being completely suppressed! ("aggressively removed from discussion", one complaint said.)

That is the bias I'm talking about in action. You simply can't go by what you notice and dislike (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). If you do, you may well end up with a picture that it is the exact opposite of what's really going on here. Needless to say, I'm not talking about you personally, but about all of us.

When you see [flagged] on a story it means users flagged it. We don't know why users flag things, but it's probably not hard to understand in this case. The topic is inflammatory, the threads have both been flamewars, and there's not much information to discuss.

Incidentally, some of the users flagging the story are people who, I know from their usernames, are sympathetic to the cause of the protestors. The flagging is therefore not exclusively ideologically driven. Seasoned Hacker News users often flag threads that they feel are bad for the site (e.g. because the thread is a flamewar), separately from their own views on the topic. That's community stewardship, not ideological suppression.

Edit: also, is it really a mystery what's happening here? The article linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867746 seems to explain it pretty well: the feds have sent police to Portland and there's a strong disagreement between the federal government and the state and local governments about whether they should be doing that. If those are the facts, it's not surprising that the threads are flamewars, because there's really not much for commenters to comment on other than to repeat the political commitment they already have.

I absolutely believe it is ideologically driven.

HN has never been a site to shy away from political flamewars. You can look back through the various posts we have on China here where people rightfully claim the government in China has been responsible for various atrocities. Those threads fall along similar political lines and there's no real debate to be had, yet they still survive [1]. Hell, we can even talk about the recent threads on Trump [2] to see similar threads explode in popularity and make it through unflagged.

But we have a very obvious instance of something that all sides should be able to agree on, which is the feds picking up people off the streets without identification or recourse. This shouldn't even have political contention because both the left and the right should be able to agree it's a Bad Thing. Especially here on HN where there's a running trend of anything that involves censorship or rights being taken away [3] [4] [5] [6] gets massive amounts of traction but a story of very obvious government overreach ends up getting flagged.

This isn't to say that I think all topics are driven like this. As you've linked before, there are various discussions on police brutality made here on HN. But I've noticed those threads also go through significant periods of being flagged or pushed off the page until there's enough users to vouch for it or vote it up to bypass those flags. Which is to say I firmly believe stories nowadays are being flagged not on the basis of discussion but because of ideological reasons even if there are a few users using flags as it is intended. Otherwise why do those other stories explode in popularity considering they have the same levels of political flamebaiting?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23739567

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23347155

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23223219

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23758547

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22954765

[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681596

all sides should be able to agree on

In reality, that's just not the case. Lots of topics just lead to low-quality discussions and those are flagged. I'd be inclined to flag something with this submission's title without as much as looking at the discussion thread.

Sure, but my point being that I linked multiple topics which lead to very obvious low quality discussions that don't end up being flagged. In fact, they end up becoming the topic of the day in many ways. So the argument becomes why do those topics end up becoming popular and topics such as this one do not?

Obviously I'm already giving away my ideological slant here which is that I firmly believe the story in question is horrific. But what I find frustrating is that flagging only works if the userbase agrees to flag topics that will lead to low quality discussions. If the userbase ends up not flagging those topics, then flagging comes down to ideological divides and that's what I see.

Things drop off the front page through flagging long before they pick up enough flags for [flagged] status. So I'm not sure your 'not flagged' metric is actually right.

It works for the low effort, low interest stories. So the stuff that trolls might submit or stories that are otherwise uninteresting.

But what I'm referring to are the high interest, high flamebait stories. Which all of the stories I've linked are examples of where the discussion largely falls down along partisan lines and the end result is poor quality discussion. Then there are stories which fall somewhere in the middle such as this one, which are high interest but end up flagged over ideological reasons. One of the ways you can tell that is specifically the case for this story is because it's been submitted a number of times now [1] with a large amount of votes and a varying degree of flags.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23870693

How can you tell the 'degree of flag' other than show their time on FP, though? I'm saying there's no real way to evaluate your claim with the links you've given because they just show you, dunno, that it was a story on HN. And again, 'high interest' is just an assumption of yours. A story can be high interest and lots of people can think it's just a poor HN fit.

That's why I qualified my claim with 'believe'. There's no way for either of us to validate our claims because flags are not public, so all we have are inferences and figuring out what stories survive and why.

But this goes back to my main point is that what people think is a good fit on HN boils down to ideological reasons. That's why stories about Youtube banning someone gets a large number of votes upwards with complaints of censorship while stories like this one get flagged.

Sure but you started by saying these things weren't flagged and they probably were. Lots of things are flagged, it doesn't take a lot of flags to throw something off the front page. I'm sure people flag for 'ideological' reasons but I think the chances are pretty good it largely evens out.

PG's most recent essay got banished off the FP (correctly, if you ask me) within a couple of hours, with zillions of upvotes and a thread made of pure HN hell. You can actually interpret that outcome N different ways to support a preferred narrative. One might be that HN is just a place for oblivious techbros. Another one might be that HN's immune system worked and deep-sixed the thing.

When you break the site guidelines the way your account has been doing—by outrageously breaking the rules in comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23867312, and also by plainly using HN primarily for ideological battle, I don't think your lengthy arguments about how HN should be moderated hold much water.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23884760. As I explained there, I've held off chastising you for much, much longer than we normally do with users who are abusing the site the way you have been. This needs to change. If you want to use HN for its intended purpose, that won't be hard—plenty of users who share your ideological views manage to do so, and I'm happy to give you any explanations that would be helpful. But if you don't want to, you need to conduct your battles elsewhere. No, this is not because we secretly side with $appalling-position. It's because it's the only way to protect the commons, and the commons has to come first. Scorched earth will do no good for anyone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Nowhere did I accuse you of secretly siding with a position. I don't believe you're siding with any appalling position but what I do believe is that HN will not survive in the current way y'all moderate content here. Eventually there'll be some sort of controversy or problem that'll pop up with the site as a whole and all of the bad faith actors will come out of the woodworks to take advantage of it. I've even personally emailed you about the people that are outright threatening other HN posters and what do you think will happen when one of them decides to take it more seriously and actually attack someone here? Since there's a lot of people that actually have PII as part of their account info.

The person I plainly insulted and called a liar is a great example of that sort of poster. You can literally look at his post history and see how he's been arguing and you even noticed that he's created multiple accounts to fuel that shit. As I've mentioned before flagging and upvoting only works as a preventative measure if the community can collectively deal with people who are not engaging in good faith. But when the person I was arguing with was explicitly advocating for the destruction of dissidents [1] there is no other side to be had.

But you know what, I'll go ahead and say I'm done posting here. I appreciate your restraint in dealing with me but I've said my peace. I've noticed older users start to become fed up in the same way I've been and once the people that were managing the commons leaves, who will be left?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23866956

This sort of thing is terrifying to me. I've read a little bit about the Stasi, and back then the whole idea behind it seemed too absurd to believe. Now we're living it. If you question or protest the status quo, you are literally putting your life in danger.

These people are not protestors. There were rioters who would mix in with the protestors and then start violence. Protestors don't show up dressed in all black with a helmet and baseball bat.

They have also been allowed to throw bricks, molotovs, bats etc on law enforcement and people. They are destroying the peaceful protests to turn them into violence. Local law enforcement hasn't been doing anything to stop it because the mayors have been useless. That's where the feds intervene - especially because most of these people who are getting arrested are crossing state lines and therefore federal.

Local law enforcement have been arresting violent and non-violent protestors alike throughout the last few months, I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that they haven’t been.

No. Local law enforcement is being handicapped by mayors and DAs who are letting go of the violent rioters free without any charges.

Could you provide some examples for this claim as well as your others?

Just look at Chicago, New York etc. Both have broken historical records of shootings as well as fatalities. Portland has been rioting for over 45 days and the Mayor and Governor is not even stopping rioters from burning down federal property.

23 million in damages to federal property including courthouse:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/violent-demonstrations-in-port...

> A review of court records showed 59 people arrested during Portland demonstrations had charges dismissed, including several people arrested on felony charges.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/criminal-cha...

The person who set the court house on fire also got his charges dropped.

“Local law enforcement” means something different in every locality but you are still wrong.

On the contrary, thousands of protestors have been actually charged. Meanwhile police officers are still virtually never charged, even in cases of obvious brutality or obvious murder.

As an example, DA Jackie Lacey hasn’t charged a single one of the 330+ cops that killed LA residents during her 8 year tenure (some orgs say it’s over 600, the police disagree)

So you believe the feds should have the right to unilaterally abduct people off the street without reasonable cause, detain them for as long as they please before releasing them without making any record of the arrest or explaining the reason for the arrest?

You have no idea what you are talking about. They were detained for 90 minutes.

This is straight up fascistic. Regardless of your opinions of the protesters or if they committed a crime, the feds should never do this, full stop. The feds making a proper arrest should announce who they are, who they're with and why they're making the arrest. The reason being that you have no clue if they actually are the feds or not. They could just be some jackoffs wearing cosplay looking to cause trouble and this gives them explicit cover in addition to being overt violations of someone's rights.

If you're one of the pro-freedom people here on HN, how could you ever rationalize this sort of thing? In what world is it ever OK for the feds to do this sort of thing? This is something both the left and the right should be able to fully agree on!

I'm incredibly disappointed this got flagged, but not surprised. It is somewhat ironic though, since on HN any threads about perceived censorship gets massive amounts of votes such as when Twitter added the disclaimer to Trump's tweets. But then you have someone quite literally being abducted without cause and here come the flags and the 'it's too political' signs coming out.

Spot on. Another sign of the rot of America, not sure if there is any coming back.

As a Portland resident, I can confirm the PPB has been escalating peaceful protests in neighborhoods. A few days ago protesters (including a mother of a protester who was horrifically maimed by an impact munition to the face by feds) were attacked and teargassed outside the police union hall in a very residential neighborhood.

The border patrol, DHS, and Portland Police Bureau are purposely terrorizing the citizens of Portland for political motives every single night. Portland is a lightning rod for right-wing animosity.

A lot of previously passive citizens are becoming radicalized by these events (similar to wartorn countries) and it kind of feels like a foreign occupation at this point.

I don't think I can ever go back to trusting police or the federal government the same way.

What's really happening is that these rioters (not the protestors) are watched trying to instigate violence at the protests and when they leave the area, they get arrested. This is because the local government has been absolutely useless at doing their job at stopping the rioting.

Start at 9:30 timestamp:

https://youtu.be/3ptD6koTknw?t=570

People sharing videos of this share either selectively edited videos without context OR they only share the ending part where they are arrested and not the part where they were instigating violence in the peaceful protests.

https://youtu.be/ha-7SETmJD4

Also they are not unidentified. They have Police on their chest.

There's also a theory (can't confirm this) that these are undercover operatives being extracted as they have been infiltrated Antifa.

Fta: “interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity.

Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.“

> who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity

That's misleading. They are being recorded while they are being violent within the peaceful protests. They are being arrested when they leave because Feds don't want to disrupt the peaceful protests - so they arrest them when they leave the area. I have watched a few videos of this happening and all of them have the person in not just all black but also with a helmet, tools to break windows and baseball bats.

Here's one example where the dude who got arrested has a helmet on. Why's that needed in peaceful protests? Also note the thing he has on his left side. That's an attachment to break car windows:

https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618

How do you know the videos you've watched (and you've only posted one) are representative of every arrest? The OPB has interviewed protestors to find out, and they're a reputable, local news organisation. Why should anybody take your word for it over theirs?

Do you have links to those videos? The link you provided doesn't show any indication that the person being detained committed a crime.

Even if I agree with your assessment, none of this excuses using unmarked vehicles, unmarked uniforms and not explaining themselves.

At some point people become enough of a liability that we collectively as a society have authorized the restriction of their rights.

This is a literally subversive movement. I'm not exaggerating or choosing a side. Watch the livestreams yourself - these people explicitly seek to subvert, dismantle, and replace modern "power structures" (intentionally left vague).

Whether you agree with what these people think they're fighting for, the system has safeguards against such insurrection.

Give me a break. These aren't the Bolsheviks fighting the white army.

The dude in the video was never told where he was or why he was arrested. He didn't know he was in the federal courthouse until after he was released.

These guys don't even have badges ffs. If someone shot these guys, I don't see how that wouldn't be considered self-defense.

Let's see what DHS is complaining about:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-co...

A lot of broken windows, graffiti and fireworks. Real insurrection. Raise the army. Prepare the nukes.

> A lot of broken windows, graffiti and fireworks.

Those are federal property and feds have full rights to do this. Also a lot of people who are being arrested are from another state. That's been the case for at least 45 days now. There's a point where the feds have to step in since the local people in that area are being terrorized. I have friends in that area and they are all planing to move out of the city because the Mayor, DA and Governor have been useless for a long time.

I have friends in that area who feel perfectly safe and think the mayor, DA, and governor are doing fine. Other fiends of mine are moving there.

We have safeguards in place already that don’t require law enforcement kidnapping people.

>At some point people become enough of a liability that we collectively as a society have authorized the restriction of their rights.

So tyranny of the majority is fine? I'm sure you can apply the same justification to what's happening in Xinjiang. Also, where's this "authorization" stemming from? Did we explicitly authorize it? Or was it implied by our inaction?

>So tyranny of the majority is fine

Perhaps it is preferable to tyranny by the minority.

>authorization" stemming from? Did we explicitly authorize it? Or was it implied by our inaction?

Did you authorize the taxes you pay, or where they go? Isn't this the so called social contract?

And please, my family fled true tyranny, I assure you nothing the US is doing is quite comperable to the CCP. Westerners don't know tyranny. They've grown so comfortable that they can take to the streets for weeks and complain about the very government that supports them.

Try doing that in the USSR or any Chines state outside of Hong Kong or Taiwan.

You say, “what’s really happening” and then follow up with generalizing all local governments as the same and all protestors as rioters, so I’ll assume your post isn’t very sincere.

But I’d like a sincere response: What difference does it make what they did if they were apprehended by unidentifiable officers? That’s the topic at hand - the fact that police are apprehending people in ways that are not identifiably different from kidnappings.

> all protestors as rioters

That's not what I meant when I said:

rioters (not the protestors)

I meant to say that a few violent people are sneaking into the protestors. By "not the protestors", I meant "I am not referring to the protestors".

By local government, I meant the mayor, the governor and the DA. Portland, Chicago has been this way for a long time.

You still haven’t responded to the strongest part of the argument here:

I’m what ways do you believe any of this justifies kidnapping people?

Kidnapping? Really?

The officers have POLICE on their chest in big letters. People getting arrested have helmets, bats and window breaking tools on. They aren't "protestors". They are preventing peaceful protestors.

Also there's some claims of some of them being undercover agents who have infiltrated Antifa though I am not sure if that can be confirmed.

You claim, “People getting arrested have helmets...” and that, “They aren’t protestors.” - here’s a video of a peaceful protestor getting taken in an unmarked vehicle [0]. Sadly, plenty more exist of similar conduct.

But two responses later and you’ve still ignored the question: what difference does it make what they’ve done - why defend unmarked police? I’ve taken the time to show evidence that it’s occurred, it’d be nice if you reciprocated some effort.

[0]https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sandiegouniontribune.com/ne...

They don't just have police badges, they also have patches on their shoulders which is for DHS. This was reported couple days ago that DHS will be coming in to stop the rioting:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-co...

Media's claim that they are "unidentified" is simply false.

I can get my friend who owns a fabric printer to print “POLICE” on to every piece of clothing I own.

Does that make me identifiably a law enforcement officer?

They don't just have police badges, they also have patches on their shoulders which is for DHS. This was reported couple days ago that DHS will be coming in to stop the rioting:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-co...

Media's claim that they are "unidentified" is simply false.

If they aren’t wearing unique identification, then I’m going to confite arguing they aren’t identifiable.

>People sharing videos of this share either selectively edited videos without context OR they only share the ending part where they are arrested and not the part where they were instigating violence in the peaceful protests.

I'm not sure the video that you've linked is any better. It's basically someone dismissing it saying they were bad people who deserved it. It adds zero information.

Here's one example where the dude who got arrested has a helmet on. Why's that needed in peaceful protests? Also note the thing he has on his left side. That's an attachment to break car windows:

https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618

And that's the video were the whole incident seems suspicious - see my comment. An undercover op would logically have equipment for stirring up trouble / doing damage if part of his remit was to be a "fifth columnist". Yeah, that is how much I trust American authorities in general, especially the right wing nutjobs taking over now.

Uh, the thugs doing the kidnapping also have helmets on so that indicates nothing whatsoever. And the only "thing" I can see looks like a regular carabiner.

thugs? They have "POLICE" on their chest.

So can anybody with two minutes and a clothes iron. Actual police announce themselves, state their intentions, follow deliberate procedures, create public reports, answer to bystanders, and generally work to uphold law and order with everybody else. Regardless of how they got the costumes, the aggressors in that video are violent criminals.

They don't just have police badges, they also have patches on their shoulders which is for DHS. This was reported couple days ago that DHS will be coming in to stop the rioting:

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/16/acting-secretary-wolf-co...

Media's claim that they are "unidentified" is simply false.

Two patches?! Okay then, three minutes since the iron is already warm. The substantive argument is about the complete lack of process and accountability.

Since you seem to be here to reflexively argue, the only thing I have left to say is that you need to realize that the federal government deploying soldiers into American cities against the express wishes of the local governments is utterly anti-Freedom, anti-American, and straight up totalitarian. We're witnessing the destruction of our country, and you're cheerleading to the tune of Party propaganda. It's never too late to snap out of that filter bubble and come to your senses.

You are just being thick on purpose. DHS was deployed because the federal buildings have been getting destroyed. If the local government doesn't want to do it, then the feds have to protect their property. You need to stop believing the media propaganda and think what you would do if your building is getting destroyed.

If we're going to continue the chain of speculation without providing additional evidence...

> the dude who got arrested has a helmet on. Why's that needed in peaceful protests?

Same reason why people wear helmets when riding a bike: even if they're not intending on smashing their head, accidents happen, so it's better to be protected. Protests do occasionally turn violent, so that's not too unreasonable. Also keep in mind there are protesters that open carry assault rifles, so in comparison a helmet us relatively tame.

>That's an attachment to break car windows:

It looks like a black stick to me? What's it supposed to be?

You are being dishonest on purpose if you think wearing a helmet and dressed up as Antifa is peaceful protesting.

What does Antifa wear? How do you feel about people that open carry at protests?

Maybe he's worried the peaceful protest will get less peaceful. There could be agitators sneaking into the crowd to stir things up. Counter protests by people with firearms. Cops shooting protesters with rubber bullets. Those all seem like plausible scenarios to me.

I couldn't identify what he had on his left side from that video. How did you come to the conclusion it was meant to break windows?

A number of peaceful protesters have been injured by rubber bullets, so it makes sense to wear a helmet.

there's a kid in texas who got a beanbag round embedded in his skull so i'd say helmets are probably a good idea when you've got cops firing less-lethal munitions into crowds

There have been three or four of them in total. I believe this is the one you're talking about though.

https://www.kut.org/post/chief-manley-says-black-man-critica...

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/06/19/pol...

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/17/police-targeting-street-...

If you are protesting the police, you should have every possible form of armour on that you have access to, even if you are protesting peacefully.

None of what you said matters and here's why.

It doesn't matter who they're arresting and for what reason. They should announce who they are, using marked vehicles and properly arrest them if they have actually committed a crime.

Because otherwise, what's stopping someone from dressing up in military garb and straight up abducting someone? How do you know they're even part of the federal law enforcement and not actually someone taking advantage of the situation to commit crimes as well?

There wasn't much time between channers "joking" about driving into protest crowds and Heather Heyer's murder. These auth-right goons have been "joking" about dropping people out of helicopters for years.

Exactly. If the "authorities" had any integrity, they'd be following the "process" and that would give them at least a fig leaf of legitimacy. Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but looking at these growing comments, I think there is a brigade going on to influence the discussion.

Yup. Post got flagged too. I assume because it's "political", but in my experience HN is very interested in civil liberties.

This is the agency that "saved" Elián González, subtlety has never been their specialty. Good to see border patrol performing their job...

The video of this is crazy. It looks like a Hollywood movie.

Do you have a link?

Here's one such encounter: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618

What rights do you have resisting being grabbed from the street by somebody who isn't identifying themselves as law enforcement? They just have a "police" patch, they could be cosplayers.

You most certainly have the right to defend yourself with lethal force, but good luck practically asserting that right. About the only hope for that would be citizen militias organizing to defend society against these lawless criminals.

This here should be a call for the libertarian-oriented red tribe to fight back against government tyranny. Either much of the red tribe needs to break free of their propaganda bubble misleading them into thinking this totalitarian behavior is in any way American, or things are going to continue to get uglier and uglier.

One can be against the lockdowns in response to a public health emergency and against incidences like these…

Reminds me of my response to my wife in reaction to the State Dept "pleading" for americans to come back "home"… I'm strongly in the camp of things getting worse and worse because none of the underlying issues in modern american society have been adequately addressed for a long time.

I edited that bit out because it was invoking a generalized "other" that didn't need to be. Just by sheer numbers, surely some who were protesting at state capitols are also protesting unaccountable police and institutionalized racism.

More succinctly though, there are many people refusing to wear masks, claiming it is government control rather than reasonable common sense in their own best interest. Meanwhile this is actual tyranny that must be resisted if we are to retain our remaining freedoms.

For the general trend, I want to hope that we're seeing the darkness before the light, but my cynical side tells me that's just a coping mechanism.

> More succinctly though, there are many people refusing to wear masks, claiming it is government control rather than reasonable common sense in their own best interest.

Yeah, I don't get that, but I'm not surprised many americans are against stupidly cheap ways to slow spread to any degree. However in response to that, lockdowns (stupidly expensive) seem to just bring on more unintended negative effects while still no guarantee at all against future death from covid.

Luckily for me, I moved to place where the government isn't strong enough to enforce such a lockdown (or a bunch of other things USG and individual state govs routinely get away with the relative apathy of the public) and people already have a culture of wearing masks in public.

> For the general trend, I want to hope that we're seeing the darkness before the light, but my cynical side tells me that's just a coping mechanism.

This is nothing yet, if history is any lesson. I've long abandoned any sense of hope.

While being generally libertarian, I did support the shutdowns because 1. there are many people who have very little choice whether to keep going to work, due to the rent treadmill the government has created 2. some kind of actual change was/is required to snap most people out of just going about their business as usual.

That expensive course of action should have been used to regroup and implement a sensible containment plan. Instead that time was basically wasted, which is need the real tragedy.

> I'm not surprised many americans are against stupidly cheap ways to slow spread to any degree

I've got to ask specifically why would you expect this? I mean I see the general ignorance and deference to expensive centralized solutions. But I would have thought that a pan-partisan shared threat like a pandemic would have put more people on the same page.

> 2. some kind of actual change was/is required to snap most people out of just going about their business as usual.

If the basis for such change comes from state diktats rather than understanding and willingness of the population to adopt such from their own initiatives… it's not surprising things are turning out the way they are.

> That expensive course of action should have been used to regroup and implement a sensible containment plan. Instead that time was basically wasted, which is need the real tragedy.

Short from martial law, my confidence in any government to succeed in such from the get go is nil. Bull in a china shop.

> But I would have thought that a pan-partisan shared threat like a pandemic would have put more people on the same page.

I would think the same thing to if the incentives for most people to be on the same page were there pre pandemic… they were not. Now there's a free for all of conflicting ideologies, while still being crushed under the weight of decades of malfeasance that has only been exacerbated even more.

Only one I've been able to find so far: https://twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/1283452585945583618...

Here’s a video with 2.9M views at my time of posting.[1] It is the source video of the video linked at the @greg_doucette page.[2] Oddly, I am blocked by this user, though I have no idea who they are. How or why, I couldn’t say. I only mention the block because it prevented click-through while signed-in.

[1] https://twitter.com/matcha_chai/status/1283328232033411072

[2] https://mobile.twitter.com/greg_doucette/status/128345258594...

Find the videos of Tianamen Square protests. Similarly plain clothed agents would swoop in and whisk away students protesting in the street.

This is utterly disturbing, and just as disturbing is the apparent reaction (or lack thereof) in this comment section. I know you guys have a lot to think about right now but, Americans, please understand that this is horrifying and unacceptable.

Reddit was all over that video the other day. The general consensus was that it looked more like an extraction of an undercover operative (dressed all in black! with only the eyes visible!). That seems plausible to me because of how cooperative the guy in black is, the efficiency of the whole thing, the fact that none of the other people in the area/video seemed to know who the guy was (they had to ask him his name, etc).

And the general theory that America is some sort of police state. Undercover operators during a protest (of any sort) is an entirely logical supposition. No, it is not a blatant one; I am not being dramatic. However, the current social turmoil is revealing the oft-ignored dark side of the police to "white America" and I think that is a good thing.

I live in the UK now and the atmosphere in general here is different, I've interacted with police a few times, and no issues - but I am white. If you're in London and black... it is different. Yes, there have been stories of undercover police doing all sorts of shite with respect to environmental protesters aka "terrorists"... and lists of undesirables aka leftists...

But even then, it is still nothing like America. This is just my experience and gut feeling - the Robert Peel theory of policing still lives on here - in the States, the theory of policing is more like police are the occupying force. Cutting the budgets of police departments will help go a long way towards controlling the problem - here, the police have a limited budget (and manpower) and so have to be smart in not wasting money and dealing with avoidable hassles.

I hasn’t heard of Sir Robert Peel before, thanks.

Though I was aware of the general concept of policing by consent.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on Peelian principales of policing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles

The Peelian principles summarise the ideas that Sir Robert Peel developed to define an ethical police force. The approach expressed in these principles is commonly known as policing by consent in the United Kingdom and other countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

In this model of policing, police officers are regarded as citizens in uniform. They exercise their powers to police their fellow citizens with the implicit consent of those fellow citizens. "Policing by consent" indicates that the legitimacy of policing in the eyes of the public is based upon a general consensus of support that follows from transparency about their powers, their integrity in exercising those powers and their accountability for doing so.

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