If you are surprised by these tactics, there are hours and hours of video you should watch from peaceful protests that have occurred over the last 6 months.
There are several major issues like that in US politics.
Why is climate change a left or right issue?
Why is wearing masks a left or right issue?
Because businesses don't want to pay/lose money on climate change action, and the "party of small businesses" endorses this view.
> Why is wearing masks a left or right issue?
Because the virus was seen as a political/messaging problem (rather than a public health issue) by one of the sides, therefore wearing masks was viewed as capitulation.
There are definitely people who believe the party line on everything. If that's the case, that could be an indication you're not thinking for yourself.
You really broadcast your ignorance and your failure to understand others positions with comments like that.
Because as with all politics it determines the distribution of resources. Those who stand to gain v/s those who stand to lose have both heavily manipulated the science, or at least the reporting.
> Why is wearing masks a left or right issue?
Voluntary masking wouldn't be. Compulsory masking runs afoul of those who have a fundamental belief in self-ownership, negative rights and reject most positive rights [1]. This has deep political roots.
There are plenty of prominent Republicans explicitly supporting Kyle Rittenhouse (not a cop, but a similar event.)
There are, of course, vastly more examples of explicit support for police brutality and other lawbreaking in opposition to protests.
> When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’ [Trump, July 2017]
> If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you?Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise. They won’t be so much, because the courts agree with us too — what’s going on in this country? [Trump, July 2016]
> “Sometimes they grab one guy, ‘I’m a reporter! I’m a reporter!” ...they threw him aside like he was a little bag of popcorn.” [Trump, September 2020, clearly mocking the reporter in context]
So the people on the “right” who are cool with this are basically every Republican official and about 70m Americans who voted for Trump last month. Seems like a lot of people!
The police were literally started in the late 1800s to protect capital and share the responsibility of cost across all people. (In the South, they were tightly related to patrolling for slaves, in the north they were predominantly helping wealthy merchants protect warehouses and other stores of wealth.)
In the decades since, the police (and their unions) have had a long, long history of right wing action.
The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) is known for their 'Red Squad', which was used in the 1900s to bust up unions, leftists, and people suspected of being communists. They regularly welcomed literal Nazis into their ranks in the 30s and 40s.
The stories aren't unique to Portland either. A common piece of police iconography is a Punisher skull. Police with SS tattoos are not uncommon.
Historically, enforcement of the law was a military, community, religious, or rotating obligation. It was not particularly respected, organized, or high class. There were some exceptions, but in general our current model of policing evolved from English tithings. Groups of men who were responsible for bringing criminals forward. These groups were collected into Shires, overseen by a Shire-reeve (later "Sheriff"). The shire reeve could round up a posse to go collect a criminal.
Over time, cities started to want to improve the protections for their capital. They wanted to try and prevent crime rather than hunt criminals. The night watch had a reputation of being low class and unruly, and the city of Glasgow decided to clean up their act. They founded the first uniformed police department in 1800 in an effort to be a visible presence in hopes of deterring crime.
Police in America were largely slave patrols, sheriffs and posses, and militias until the middle of the 1800s, when larger cities started following Glasgow's model.
This is a correct reading of the history of policing in America[1].
I'm serious baffled as to how people got the idea that police were created in the 1800s. Do people really believe that cities like Boston and New York existed for centuries with nobody to enforce laws?
> Among the first public police forces established in colonial North America were the watchmen organized in Boston in 1631 and in New Amsterdam (later New York City) in 1647.
Again, police are as old as civilization. Laws without a body to enforce them are just words in paper (or clay tablets).
That said, we're skidding towards a semantic argument, so if you are comfortable agreeing to disagree here, I am too. We can continue to think each other wrong, looking at the same history.
This isn't a semantic disagreement, this is factually incorrect. ”Organized, uniformed, powerfully armed standing patrol police forces" have absolutely existed in the US before the 1800s and date back to classical antiquity at least. Rome often employed it's legions as police, and there was even a dedicated legion stationed specifically to police Rome [1]. It's hard to get more "Organized, uniformed, powerfully armed" than deploying the military as a patrol force. And in the US professional police forces, not militia or community watch, have existed since the 1600s. And by the way, many police forces are still led by elected leaders - professional, organized police and community oversight are not mutually exclusive.
It might be fair to say that in the 1800s and early 1900s industrialization and technology had progressed to the point that police started to resemble modern police, and many US cities grew to the point that they started municipal police forces in this time frame. But the police of the 21st century with cameras, computers, dna testing, 911 systems and radios are arguably even more removed from the police of 1900 than the police of 1900 were to the police of 1800 or 1700.
This strikes me as the kind of characterization of other peoples' beliefs that they would find to be false, misleading, and uncharitable.
Not that odd. One side believes in decentralized power which tends toward police doing "pretty much anything" according to their read of the situation, and another side favors reams of paperwork and regulations that may hinder effective policing. The oddity in the US is how the media convinces people to pick one side and criticize the other absolutely, rather than commit to compromise.
I would say that being careful with one's language to avoid offense is reasonable, if the hypothetical other party's propensity for taking offense is reasonable. Incense at the specter of a political discussion is not reasonable.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Compass
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Po...