Hacker News Reader

Comment by tdfx | Hacker News Reader

I'm genuinely happy that SF is seeing peaceful protests, but I spent 2 weeks driving through National Guard checkpoints in my city due to violent unrest, and I'm aware of at least 5 other cities who were similarly affected. Minimizing the presence of violence on either side is wrong. The "few bad apples" narrative doesn't work for cops or protesters, or we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing.

View on HN

The police and the general population have very different flavors of bad apple.

The "good" protestors have no ability nor obligation to remove or control the "bad" ones. It's shameful that some see fit to dismiss the message of them all for the actions of a few. And anyway, the goodness or badness of violent or riotous protests through the lens of history is more than a little bit complicated.

The police do have such an ability and obligation. They are organized and they are in a position of power. It is shameful that some see fit to excuse the entire enterprise because not all cops are bad.

Neither is as simple as that.

The complete disregard for locality and generalizations over an entire continent-sized country don't help either. It's like if a report on the Belarus election situation was used to insist the entirety of the EU was collapsing, while at the same time a report over protests in, I dunno, Sweden was used to show that everything in Belarus is peaceful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com