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Comment by KoftaBob | Hacker News Reader

> Several cities in the US were firebombed nightly for months in 2020.

What? What is this referring to?

From the general tone of the rest of the comment, it's likely they're referring to actions taken adjacent to the Black Lives Matter protests which were depicted in some news media as being like a war zone. Oddly, none of the cities today look like, I don't know, Ukraine. But some people will make mountains from molehills.

I was under the impression that “firebombing” exclusively referred to aerial firebombing during war, so it sounded super strange.

Now that i looked up the term, i see that it can mean “any act in which an incendiary device is used to initiate a fire”.

Does that technically include lighting a cigarette?

Depends on your definition of incendiary device. Wikipedia says weapons designed to start fires. I feel like a zippo thrown onto something flammable is about as far as that stretches.

But they were mostly peaceful mountains. Right?

You seem to be strangely emotionally invested in this issue. Did you witness these events yourself?

They were live streamed. I watched hundreds of hours of live feeds showing wide-spread violence, looting and burning down buildings.

Have there been worse conditions in the world? Obviously. But this isn't a competition for who had the worst things happen to them in all of history.

Portland, amongst others.

How many people died in the Portland firebombings? How much property was destroyed? Are we talking Dresden or Kobe levels? Because when you say 'firebombing nightly for months', that's what I think of.

BLM caused billions worth of damage over the course of the summer of love.

The Portland Business Alliance, which may not be an entirely unbiased source, put the dollar figure at 10s of millions for Portland, not billions.

Has anyone been able to resettle all the Portlandian refugees? From your comments, it must have been on par with Dresden in March of 1945, right?

Yeah, Portland was basically wiped off the map.

Actual photo of Portland June 2020.

https://i.imgur.com/LoNeyZa.jpg

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